boost-open-ratesCreating and sending emails is great for engaging and targeting prospects and clients, but if your emails are getting a very low open rate then something you’re doing is not right! – Especially if customers are deleting your emails.

There are many ingredients for creating that effective email campaign, but today I will be focusing on how you can boost your open rates.

Create an eye-catching subject line

The subject line is the first thing you will see on any email. If it’s not engaging expect your emails to be ignored or possibly deleted.. If you are not A/B testing your subject lines then that’s something you can start doing right away. A/B testing your subject lines will help you find the most effective opening line. The best way for you to do this is test, test and test again!

Send from a human, not a company

I’m not sure about you, but when I check my emails one of the things I look at is the sender’s email address and whether I know the person or company. If it’s a company address it’s most likely an email wanting me to buy from them. If that’s the case sometimes I’ll just delete the email because I wouldn’t be interested in it unless it’s something I’m specifically looking for. An email that is sent by an actual person from your company has a much better chance of being opened.

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As you can see from the above screenshots, my personal company email had an increased open rate compared to the info@ email address.

Clear out dead subscribers

This means those subscribers that are inactive and not engaging with your emails. You should ideally segment your lists and have an active list of subscribers that are engaging with your emails. You need to keep your lists clean and regularly remove inactive subscribers or those emails with a hard bounce.

Also a good little note I’d like to share with you is, always keep an eye out for misspelled addresses such as “gmal.com”, “yhoo.com” etc. Removing them will help you save costs, because you won’t be sending out emails to addresses that can’t receive them.

Go Responsive

Nowadays with more people using smartphones it’s vital to stay up-to-date with the latest technology. More and more people are now opening emails on their phones. In fact according to Litmus, most emails are opened on Apple iPhone.

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I’d much rather receive an email that I can read with ease and not have to worry about zooming in to read the content every time.  I’m sure you will also agree?

Avoid spam filters

Email filters are becoming increasingly clever and if your email campaign is caught by a spam filter, you’ll see your open rates start to drop. Obviously we all want to stay out of the spam filters don’t we? Well first things first, avoid sending emails that look like spam. Secondly avoid sending emails with subject lines all in caps and try to avoid using these well known spam triggers, “Free”, “$$$”, “Deal” etc.

Personalise!

Personalising your emails is one of the best ways to ensure they get opened. If I receive an email starting with “Hi Gareth,” 9 out of 10 times I’d open it. Why? Because they clearly know my name and it’s directed at me. Recipients are more likely to open emails that are personalised to them, such as including their name in the email subject line and even in the email content itself. This is more likely to make the recipient engage with the email and keep them opening future emails.

As you can see from the below screenshot, I received an email from Just Eat and they’ve done a great job with personalising the email. Just Eat have included my name in the content and also written the email as if they were directly talking to me and asking me to give them feedback on how well they did.

Another personalised email I received was from Milo at gonitro. Once again this was also an effective personalised email mentioning my name in both the subject line and in the email copy.

Send at the best time

Timing is very important, you need to find out the best time to send your email campaigns. You don’t want to send them too early or too late at night because they’ll just get lost with new emails coming in. That’s why it’s best find out which time is most suitable for your audience.

If you are sending out a B2C email campaign, your subscribers might open them during lunch or after work, whereas if you are sending a B2B email campaign, you’re more likely to get opens by sending the email in the morning. If you’re sending emails in the morning remember you’re not the only one… Your emails might get lost with others so try not to send too early. Anywhere between 8-10am is what we’d recommend.