What is a good email open rate (and how can you improve it)
This is something that my clients ask me a lot! How to get their email into the primary tab, and how to get people to actually open and read their emails.
What a good open rate is does differ from person to person and industry. A ballpark figure is around 20%. I try and get my clients to aim between 30% and 40%. I’m going to share a few of my top tips, and a few things you need to know to help you improve it and get that open rate up to something a bit higher so that you can start increasing the number of people you can nurture into your beautiful world!
1. Spend time on your email subject line
This is what it boils down to. How are you going to not only stand out in that inbox, but actually get the recipient to open that email! Because it doesn’t matter what amazing goodness you have in there, if your subject liine doesn’t grab their attention they are never going to see it and your open rate will stay the same.
You need to create intrigue. You need to plant a seed that makes them go ‘Ohhhh I need to know more about that’. Either because it’s going to give them some value that they can use in their business, or because we are just all inherently plain nosy!
Take these email subject line examples. Which would you rather open?
“Sam Milburn Creative - Latest Newsletter”
“The time I thought I’d have to close my business – Sam have you done this?”
“Hey Sam - get your emails opened with my top content tips and tricks!”
The first is….boring.
The other two are still sharing my newsletter but I’m highlighting something that is included in the content. Which could be something of value, or something a bit more personal. For example, an interesting story that might resonate with you.
If you have to, write 3 or 4 email subject lines and then apply the same logic. Go away and then come back to it.
Trust me, the email subject line is A VERY mportant part so spend some time on it.
2. Personalisation your email subject line to increase your open rate by 20%
74% of marketers claim to have an increased email open rate 20% when the email subject line was personalised.
There really is nothing else to say about this except personalise the email subject line and first line of the email where appropriate. To do this you need to make sure you’re collecting first names and putting them in the right field. For example. If your sign-up form just says ‘Name’ then people are likely to put their full name in. Which then, when used in your content can sound a bit odd! So make sure you are collecting first names.
3. Avoid spammy words and content in your email subject line
Getting past those email spam filters is a job. But Hubspot have done a lot of the hard work for you and created this blog with tips on what words to NOT use in your email subject line or email body, and have included a full list of words that email providers see as spam.
4. Test your emails so you can improve your email subject line and get better open rates on your next campaign
Most email providers let you do what’s called A/B testing. Send the same email with two different subject lines, or change up the content, and each email will be sent to a random 50% of your list. You can then compare the email results, and tweak for next time.
5. Include links in your emails but not too many buttons
With the fancy email newsletter designs we can create now, all those buttons and images can be translated as spam or salesy (meaning you end up in the recipient’s promotions box - nearly as bad as spam!) so play it down a bit. We want links as this is a great way to test the success of your email but you can add them without a button. You can hyperlink into words or just add the link as it is.
The email open rate isn’t foolproof and is not always the best measure of success.
Some providers count an ‘auto preview’ as an open, so looking at your click-throughs is another good way to measure success.
If you liked this then check out some of my other free downloadable resources here, from blogging to email marketing my downloads give you actionable steps you can take to improve your marketing
🔗 www.sammilburndigitalmarketing.com/downloads
