Check out proven techniques that help increase email open rates and engage your audience with your content.
The email open rate is one of the most important indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of your campaigns. After all, it’s pointless to spend time and resources creating engaging content if the recipients don’t open your emails, right?
Increasing this rate by 50% might seem like a big challenge, but with the right strategies, it’s entirely achievable. Therefore, in this article, we will explore 7 proven techniques suggested by our CMO Renan Caixeiro, to achieve better open rates with your email campaigns. Follow along.
7 tips to increase your email open rate
From crafting an attractive subject line to taking care of your segmentation list, check out the 7 tips from Renan Caixeiro below to increase the open rate of email marketing by 50%
1. Have an attractive subject line
The email subject line is your first impression. Therefore, ensuring it’s attractive is essential to increase your open rate. One of the most effective strategies for this is to personalize the subject line with the recipient’s name..
According to Renan, studies show that this simple customization can increase the rate by up to 22%. For example, instead of ‘Check out our news’, you can use ‘First Name, see the news especially for you’.
Additionally, avoid words that may be interpreted as spam, such as free, promotion, and click here. Major email platforms like GoDaddy warn that using these words can direct the email straight to the spam folder, drastically reducing visibility.
Another technique is to give a preview of what the reader will find in the email. Be intriguing but not generic, and don’t give away all the information in the subject line.
2. Sender personalization
Besides personalizing the email subject line, configuring the sender is a crucial aspect to increase the open rate. After all, a strategic sender can create a closer connection with the audience, convey authority, and generate immediate recognition.
Thus, replace the company name or terms like team with the name of someone who helps represent the brand and is already known to the public. This makes the recipient feel they are receiving an email from a real person, not an impersonal entity.
Along with this, you can personalize according to your contact list segmentation. For example, VIP clients can receive emails from a specific account manager, while new subscribers can receive welcome emails from a customer service representative.
3. List segmentation
Sending emails to a broad, generic list can result in low open rates, as non-personalized messages tend not to resonate with all recipients. Therefore, segmentation is a powerful strategy that can transform your results.
Dividing your contact list into smaller, more specific segments allows you to create more relevant emails for each group. For example, you can segment based on criteria
- demographics, such as age and gender,
- geography, such as region or city,
- or by stage in the sales funnel. While new leads can receive welcome emails, leads in the decision phase can receive case studies to help finalize the purchase.
By applying this strategy, you make the messages more personal and relevant, increasing the likelihood that recipients will open and interact with your emails.
4. Use of content preview
The content preview, also known as a preheader, is an excellent tool to increase email open rates. Tools like Mailchimp, RD Station, and others allow adding a preheader that appears right after the subject line, providing a preview of what’s to come..
A valuable tip from Renan is to use numbers and indicators in the preview, as these elements are known to capture readers’ attention and encourage them to click. For example, instead of a generic preheader, use something more specific and attractive like ‘Save up to 30% on your purchases this month.’
Additionally, it’s important to ensure that the preview is not a repetition of the title but a complement to it.
Finally, using the content preview strategically not only improves the first impression of the email but also provides an additional reason for the recipient to want to explore it.
5. Find the perfect timing for sending
Finding the ideal time to send your emails is essential to increase the open rate. Many marketing automation tools like Mailchimp and RD Station offer the feature of smart scheduling, which sends emails gradually, considering the best time for each recipient. This maximizes the chances of your email being opened.
Moreover, although there are studies indicating the best days and times to send emails generally, following these guidelines might lead to saturation as many companies will do the same.
Therefore, it’s important to test different times to find out what works best for your specific audience. With this, you can identify behavior patterns of your recipients and adjust the strategy as needed.
Finally, another effective technique is to test sending your emails 5 or 10 minutes before the most competitive times, like just before 8 am, 9 am, or 10 am. This can make your email reach the recipients’ inbox before those from other companies, increasing visibility and the likelihood of being opened.
6. A/B Testing to increase email open rates
The A/B Test is a great tool to optimize your email open rate. This method involves sending two variations of an email to small samples of your list, allowing you to assess which version performs better before sending it to the rest of the recipients..
You can test manually, but most email platforms offer integrated functionalities to perform A/B testing in an automated way, which facilitates the comparison of different elements and the collection of accurate data.
Indeed, one of the most common aspects to test is the subject line. You can create two variations with different styles, words, or approaches and see which one generates more opens. Additionally, you can test other elements like the sender, the content preview, or even the body of the email.
Regardless of what is chosen, it’s essential to record all the results from the A/B tests to analyze and identify patterns. Based on the data, you adjust the strategies to continuously improve your email open rate.
7. Clean your email list
Our last tip is to keep your lead list clean and updated, to ensure that your content reaches the right people. Removing users who haven’t interacted with your emails for a long time reduces the risk of being marked as spam and improves the deliverability of your messages.
Most tools offer functionalities that help identify and segment the most engaged audiences. This way, you avoid penalties from email servers and ensure that the campaigns reach those who are truly interested.
Along with this, it’s also important to test different email marketing tools to discover which one delivers content most efficiently. Also, configure the account correctly to avoid any blocking during sending.
Analyze the performance of your email campaigns with Reportei.
In addition to following these tips to improve your email open rate, it’s essential to monitor all the results of your campaigns daily to continuously refine the content.
And our tip for this is to use Reportei, which integrates with the main email platforms in the market like RD Station, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Egoi, ActiveCampaign, and more, offering complete solutions for analysts such as
- unlimited reports with all essential metrics on campaigns,
- dashboards for real-time monitoring,
- and artificial intelligence features to automatically analyze your results, generate accurate insights, and optimize your email campaigns..
Enjoy our free trial period and see in practice how Reportei helps to improve the open rate, clicks, and content of your emails.
