5 Simple Tips To Increase Email Open Rates

Let’s face it, email marketing is a big part of your overall?marketing strategy?to help grow your business. In fact, you need to have a good email strategy if you want to be able to maintain a positive relationship with your current and future audiences. That being said, email has been shown to be one of the highest converting and most efficient tools in marketing and lead generation.

In this article, we’re diving into 5 simple tips on how to increase your email open rates so your sales and marketing emails aren’t taking a nose-dive into the point of no return. But before we get into those tips, let’s talk a little about email deliverability.

WHY IS EMAIL DELIVERY IMPORTANT??

Email deliverability is the very first step you need to accomplish to make sure your audience is actually receiving your emails. Your emails can be delivered to the junk folder, to your subscribers’ inbox, or bounce altogether. If your emails aren’t being properly delivered,?you are losing your ability to make connections and have conversations with your subscribers. Remember, your goal is to always make it to your subscribers’ inboxes.

Finally, getting your emails to your audience’s inboxes is essential for running a successful email marketing campaign. You can develop your email marketing best practices and craft the perfect email, but if your subscribers aren’t receiving the message then all of that work goes out the window.

HOW DO MY EMAILS MAKE IT TO MY SUBSCRIBER’S INBOXES?

Though there are many factors to consider when thinking about email deliverability, here are 5 tips you can put into practice immediately to make sure that your emails are actually reaching the inboxes of your subscribers.

1. Get your subscribers to safelist you.?

Safelisting is when your subscribers add your email address to their contact list. This can be done directly within their internet service providers (ISP) such as Gmail or Yahoo. Safelisting greatly improves your overall email deliverability. When your subscribers safelist your emails it means that your emails are wanted. They will then receive all of your emails in their inboxes – even the promotional ones. People are more likely to open emails that land in their inboxes – which means your email engagement rate will increase as well. You may be wondering how your subscribers will know to safelist your emails. Here is a suggestion you may want to try. In your welcome email, you can ask your subscribers to safelist you. Check out the following example of how you can ask your readers to safelist your emails:?To make sure you receive all of our emails, it is recommended that you safelist us by following this?guide.

While safelisting is an important practice, it is of equal importance to continue to focus on creating content that is valuable and helpful to your subscribers. When you produce excellent content plus ask your subscribers to safelist your emails, you are increasing your chances for better email deliverability.

2. Use segmentation.?

Email open rates are calculated by dividing the number of messages opened by the number of messages sent. However, the way that messages are?segmented?can impact that ratio.?By using market segmentation, or dividing your audience into more refined groups, you can create messages based on that group’s interest – and that means getting the right message to the right people. This allows people to choose an option that they like the best. After they choose the option, they will be placed in categories or segments with like-minded people. Then, you will know exactly what content to include in your emails and how often your people like to be emailed.?Your audience can be segmented based on their location, gender, purchase history, or any other data points you wish to collect about them. For email deliverability, this segmentation is important because it ensures that the audience member is receiving a message that they truly care about, and it will increase the likelihood of the audience member engaging with the brand.

3. Keep your list clean

If you are running an online, for-profit business, or a non-profit, the most important asset your company will have is your email subscriber list. Why? Because it’s one of the only assets that will keep giving you sales and engagement month after month without you having to put in more work. This is why it is so important to have a clean list. If you have some people on your list who have not opened or clicked on your emails for months, then it’s probably time to unsubscribe them. These are the people who are not interested in what you are selling or the value you are bringing. They are also the ones who will end up hurting your deliverability score if they report your emails as spam. If this happens, your emails will end up in the spam folder of every new person on your list.

4. Create unique subject lines.

Nobody wants to open an email that has a boring subject line. More than that, nobody is likely to open an email with a boring subject line. Email?subject lines may not be as important as subject content, but they can be the difference between someone opening your newsletter or moving it to the spam folder. Subject lines are the first thing people see in their inbox, and if your email subject line is boring or incomprehensible, it may not even get that far—it will just get bounced back to you.

Many people don’t take the time to craft great subject lines for their emails – but here’s why you should. The best way to make an impression with your emails is to make your subject line stand out against all the rest. You can do this by being funny, clever, provocative, mysterious—in other words, by doing something unusual. The most effective subject lines are often weirdly specific and personal, like “Are you coming?” or “I’m bored.” The goal is not just to catch people’s attention but to make them think you know them so well that you can predict what they’ll be interested in. That’s tough to do! However, if you want your email to stand out, it’s worth practicing.

5. Make it easy to unsubscribe.

Holding people hostage on your list is against the?law. It definitely will not improve your engagement and could get you in a lot of trouble. If people would like to exit stage left, then please let them. Your unsubscribe button should be attached to each and every single email you send out. This is usually automated within your email marketing platform of choice. Your unsubscribe button (or link) should be clearly visible to your recipients so they can easily opt out. It is normal that some people may not want to receive multiple promotion emails on a product or service they are not interested in, and that’s OK. It’s OK if people unsubscribe. You are building a list of people that actually want to be there, and want to hear from you. A more engaged list can lead to more sales, opportunities, and collaborations with for-profit businesses as well as non-profit organizations.?

Let’s be honest. No one likes getting tons of emails in their inbox every day, which is why it’s important for your emails to stand out. Be creative with that subject line, use segmentation to give the people what they want, and make it easy to opt-out so the people who want to hear from you are actually getting your emails Keep the interest up and stay on the safelist, not the spam list. There is plenty of value in what your emails have to offer, and using these tips will get you on the path to better open rates and a better email marketing strategy.?Get in touch with us?when you are ready to create a great strategy to?up-level?the delivery of your emails. ??