How to Increase your Response Rate

Are you interested in learning 12 quick ways to boost your email responsiveness? It’s always nice to see people give feedback after you reach out to them, however, achieving a high response rate is quite the challenge. If you implement even half of these tips, you’ll experience substantial improvement in your response rate.

Can you recall when you last responded to a cold email? Most people simply delete them or mark them as spam, whether they read them or not. And those that actually give it some of their precious time and give it a chance end up not bothering to respond either way. In no particular order, here’s how you can improve your response rates.

1. Make Your Subject Line Unique

Adding a contact’s/coworker’s name, or the company name to the subject line makes it more personalized. For example - SalesAR <> XYZ

Avoid asking questions. Try replacing lines like “Time to chat?” with something like “Let’s chat!”.

Keep your subject line length to a minimum. Anything longer than 6 words can cause a considerable drop in response rate. Short, simple, and a little clickbaity when possible.

A good subject line can be the difference between failure and success, hence, it's arguably the most important element of any marketing email strategy.

2. Improve the Format of Your Emails

Also a good method for avoiding spam with your marketing email - remove the majority of the formatting. Don’t use any fancy fonts or colors. Only use bold, italics, or underlining when writing. Bullets and numbered lists are also useful for organizing text while preserving a personal touch and professionalism.

Make sure to sign your email professionally. Name, title, email, phone number, and your company should all be included in your email signature. Including a professional-looking photo of yourself will also help to increase response rates, but keep the file size minimal.

3. Send at Specific Times

Determine when the optimal time to send an email is based on your industry’s trends and corporate culture. Obviously, stick to sending letters only on weekdays and in the time zone where the recipient is.

4. Get to the Point

It’s easy to get caught up in creating amazing content, but when it comes to emails, customers expect the information to be delivered fast and succinctly.

Keep it short, simple, and to the point. I think you will agree that humans are innately lazy and prefer to do what requires the least amount of energy. In addition, we have increasingly small attention spans, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a super detailed email will likely perform worse than 2 small paragraphs with no specifics.

Start by saying what you need to say, then build up your convincing argument.

5. Be Specific in Your Call to Action

Nothing is more frustrating than being ordered to do something and having no idea what it is. Make sure that the action you want your reader to do is apparent in your email.

If you’re looking for ideas, a call to action can be direct, such as a link or a button that takes users to the checkout page, or indirect, such as a post or social share that engages users. In both cases, you should test the placement and type of call to action to see which one performs better.

6. Work With Your Target Audience

Your target recipient list should be carefully researched. It should only include people who are likely to be interested in purchasing your products or services. This list requires a significant amount of time to prepare. It’s also a good idea to figure out what the needs of folks on the list are.

For instance, sending a baby product promotion offer to people over the age of 65 will likely result in your email being a waste of time. Therefore, selecting the appropriate recipients is critical. When sending an email to a company, it is usually a good idea to send it to a decision-maker who deals with the product type you want to sell there.

7. Use Branded Templates That Are Professionally Designed

Make use of branded, professional templates. You can tell when a company is genuinely interested in email marketing, and you can also tell when they aren’t. A branded email template that matches your previous marketing efforts can make a positive first impression and increase the trust factor of your email.

If you are a customer of any of the email marketing software, you will have access to a large number of templates in the marketplace, but we recommend investing time and money in having a good custom template created. Be sure to test that template using some of our other tips to ensure it works for all readers. Also, keep in mind that the more complex and fancy your template, the higher the odds of it reaching spam, hence, it’s a double-edged sword.

8. Be Confident & Convincing

Another no-brainer, but it’s still one of the most common errors in email campaigns. No one is obligated to open your email if you don’t have a compelling offer. That’s all there is to it. So make it worthwhile for them.

Consider unique incentives that will make reading your email worthwhile, and if you can’t provide anything substantial, start contemplating new ways to provide value. If you aren’t any better than the competition, why would they choose you? Would you?

9. Ask Questions

Asking open-ended questions after a newsletter or a company update. End with a question that invites your subscribers to respond. Use questions to pique people’s interest in your products or services or learn more about your subscribers.

Also, take the opportunity to ask your subscribers for feedback. Sometimes the best approach is a direct one. When you genuinely want responses, ask your subscribers to get back to you.

10. Always Proofread & Double Check Everything

Most people would be shocked to learn how many messed up emails they send without thoroughly rereading them.

Never put your faith in the mercy of the recipient. Even your appealing offer may not be enough to save the situation if you send a business email to your prospect with spelling or punctuation issues. Make it a habit to proofread your emails thoroughly before sending them. It’s hard to gain someone’s brand loyalty and build a reputation, and one badly written email can undo years of hard work.

Marketing email companies can ruin your reputation if they mess up the email used for outreach, so this is not something you want to cheap out on.

11. Request Feedback From Your Own Team

You may believe that your email already has everything going for it, but it’s all too easy to get overconfident and overlook potentially serious flaws that are right in front of your eyes.

Send a test email to someone you trust to get some honest feedback before you initiate the next email campaign. This easy procedure takes only a few minutes and might save you a lot of time and effort by making sure that everything is on point, and the likelihood of the recipient responding positively is high.

12. Focus on the Benefits

One of the most basic marketing ideas is to focus on advantages rather than features. Despite this, most salespeople still start talking about features way too soon. Just make sure your cold emails are primarily focused on benefits, especially when it’s preferable to keep them short.