How To Double Your Email Open Rate With This Growth Hack?

How can you determine the success of your email campaign?

Common knowledge is you would go with the number of people who opened the email along with the no. of times links are clicked in your sent email i.e. email open rate and click-through-rate.

That's how most people used to determine it.

There's nothing wrong with it but what I saw here in the big picture is that the more people open your email the more links are clicked. 

So, now how to increase your email open rate?

There are bulks of email marketing strategies available on the internet but what I seek if a logical strategy with statistical results?

This article comprises growth hack strategies along with their impact on the success of your email campaigns.

Before that, we need to go through a few basics first.

What Is Called An Email Open Rate?

Most people consider email open rate as the number of people who click open your email right from their inbox.

That’s how it’s likely to be seen from the surface, but it’s not the correct answer. Email is only counted as an opened when it falls in one of the criteria i.e.-

• The recipient enables images in your email to be displayed in the preview pane or a full view of the email.
• The recipient clicks a link in your email.

Surprisingly easy, right. But how are email open rates calculated and who does it?

The answer is ESPs (email service provider) calculates the email-open rate by excluding the number of bounced emails from the number of emails sent and then dividing it from the numbers of emails opened.

Note: Bounced emails are the ones that are not delivered to the recipient.

Let see, practically if you sent 10 emails, and 1 email is bounced. So, you have 9 delivered emails and in those 1 is opened. Then email open rate of your campaign would be 11% (1 is opened out of 9 delivered).

How much email rate do you need to make it a success?

Common knowledge is above the average rate.

 So, what is the average rate?

The average rate differs from country to country, industry to industry. 

Until the year 2018, the average was consistent at 24% globally. From then it has decreased to 21.3%.

Is email marketing on the verge of death?

As shown in the stats above, whenever there is a downfall in email open rate it is followed by a huge rise as well.

Before diving in you need to first configure where you stand, how many people read your email, what is your email open rate?

But before even bothering about the emails being opened we have one more major issue in our hand which is bounced emails?

How to prevent emails from bouncing back?

Bounced emails make a huge impact on your email open rate.

So, now the matter in your hand is how to make the emails delivered to your readers?

The basic tips on increasing the delivery rate are:

• Use Confirmed opt-in- You should not be wasting your time sending emails to the readers who are not even interested in it. Otherwise, they won’t open it and would lower the rate instead.

Frequently ask your readers to add you to their trusted contacts address book this would make it easier for your reader to receive email from your side.

• Clear up Your Sender list- Even the reader is your subscriber but not opening your email more than 3 times in a row, is it useful to send him emails? No, right. You have to see for these contacts and clear them as frequently as possible.

More people receiving your email mean more chance of the email being opened.

Before trying the email marketing strategy to increasing the email open rate you need to find out the insights of customers who are already reading your emails.

On what device, readers are opening your email?

Insights into how people read your emails support you in making strategies for your email campaign.

We can no longer ignore mobile and tablet devices.

Email open rates from mobile and tablet devices have gone up by more than 100% since 2011 and kept growing every year.

These days 82% of emails are opened from mobile devices. 

Now, let’s think of an email you can’t open on your mobile. You would delete it right away, that’s what 80% of users do.

Did you know only one out of five i.e. 20% email campaigns are optimized for mobile devices?

Now every 9 out of 10 companies are devising a strategy to optimize their email campaign for mobile devices.

Have you ever received emails from your email campaign?

If not, do it now and check whether they are optimized for mobile devices or not. 

Optimize now to get significant growth in your email open rate.

When should you send emails from your email campaign?

According to the survey of Coschedule, 9 am- 11 am is the best time to send a marketing email there is a peak at 10 am. It is also found that from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. on working days, 53% of emails are opened.

Note:  23% of the sent emails are opened in the first hour of being sent, 24 hours later this turns into 1%.

Now, apart from these else, you need to increase your email open rate.

Growth Hack tips to include in your Email Marketing Strategy

Which part of the emails faces the customers first? 

The answer is the subject and the sender’s name.

Our survey says 46% of readers opened the email because of the sender’s name and 33.9% of emails are opened because of the subject line. 

TIPS

• Sender’s name- Whether you use a personal name, company name, or website name, believe it or not, but the impact is greater than it seems. It is a fact that when you use a personal name instead of the website’s name [email protected] open rate is increased by more than 36%.
• Subject Line- Being the face of the email content, the subject plays an important role in the email open rate. It’s well said that ‘ you should spend more time writing the headline than you spent on writing the content. The subject line shouldn’t be the first that you think of; it takes time to come up with the best line out there. Several surveys prove that emails with a subject line of 6 to 10 words have an increased open rate, which makes the subject of 8 words an ideal one. 
• Recipients Name is the Subject Line- Subject line with the recipient’s name is proven to be more provoking as it improves the open rate by 2%.
• Segmentation- Whom you are sending is quite important for open rate, in a case study when you send an email segmented based on interest rather than sending it to everyone in your list has a chance of 94% being opened.

Now, we have seen what to add to our emails. What about the things we should be avoiding or it may affect our email marketing strategy?

• Words Like-Confirm, feature and upgrade are most likely to push our emails toward spam.
• ‘?‘ and ‘#‘ involvement in emails makes it less likely to be opened. 
• Emoji’s– It’s seen very often that that emails with the subject line including emoji are more likely to be ignored by the readers.

Now, many of you must be wondering if it works or not?

Using the growth hack, my average email open rate is 40.9%, which is way above the average open rate i.e. 24%.

Conclusion

I’ve already provided the growth hacks for improving your email open rate. Here is the recap for you:

• 6-10 words should be used in the subject line.
• Use a segmented list of subscribers.
• Send emails on the proper day and time.
• Personalize the subject line.
• Use an appropriate sender’s name.
• Optimizing your email campaign according to mobile devices.

Use these tips to increase the email open rate. Forge these into your email marketing strategy. 

Now It’s Your Turn. 

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