15 Ways To Increase Open Rates For Your Next Email Campaign

You might be surprised to learn that only 21.3% of emails are opened. That’s less than a quarter of all emails sent every day.

That means 79% of your customers are potentially missing your offers, discounts, welcome emails, giveaways, and blog posts that you spend hours creating.

Just crafting the perfect email is half the battle but getting someone to actually open your email is the biggest challenge. Why is that? Because the average person receives 100 emails a day in their inbox. When your email lands in someone’s inbox, you are competing with all of those emails.

So how is open rate calculated and how can you find it?

It’s your total number of emails opened, divided by the number of total emails delivered, multiplied by 100. You can find your open rate in your campaign report inside of your email marketing software.

The good news is that your email campaigns don’t have to suffer from low open rates.

We offer tips for service businesses and online shops on how to increase their email open rates.

1. Use your business name as the sender name

The sender name is said to be the biggest reason why someone opens an email. Make sure your sender name matches your business name. It should be recognizable. If you are going to use your personal name, make sure it has your business name next to your personal name.

2. Write a catchy subject line and preview text line

We were not surprised when we learned that the subject line is one of the main reasons why someone opens an email. It’s usually the first thing you see. Entice people to open your email, capture their attention, try to craft your subject line so that it stands out. Some ways to write a great subject line: ask a question, make a list, be direct, give people the offer right in the subject line.

3. Authenticate and verify your email domain

When you authenticate your email domain, it allows you to send emails through your domain inside of your email marketing software. For example, instead of sending emails from [email protected] they will instead come from [email protected]. Why is this important? Because it can help keep your emails from going to someone’s spam folder. It also just looks more professional and trustworthy when you send emails from your own domain. If someone knows and trusts the sender, they are more likely to open an email.

4. Be consistent

Your email content should answer’s your audience’s pain point and consistently provide some type of value. The more great content you send out, the more people will open your email and the higher your open rates will be. Being consistent does not mean you have to be boring! Some great ideas for marketing campaigns are blog posts, giveaways, anniversary emails, birthday emails, and offers and discounts. If you do email marketing well, you can build up excitement and anticipation with your audience. Your email contacts might even look forward to getting your emails and you will see your open rates go up.

5. Send emails 2-4 times a month

People can forget that they even signed up to their email list, if you don’t send enough emails. Email marketing is a proven tactic for increasing engagement and revenue but that’s only true if they open your emails! Remind your email contacts of the great content you have to offer and be consistent. We recommend sending 2-4 emails a month.

6. Send at optimal times

When researchers studied open rates by day, they found emails that were sent on weekdays got the highest open rates. The best times to send an email campaign are between 10 am and 3 pm. Sending your email at just the right time is important since almost a quarter of all emails are opened within the first hour of being received. The longer your email sits in someone’s inbox, the less of a chance it has to be opened and read.

7. Optimize for mobile

Did you know that 81% of all emails are opened on a mobile device? You can see why optimizing your email campaigns for mobile is so important. Make sure to preview your emails on mobile before sending. Email campaigns can look very different on desktop and mobile and that’s why it’s important to preview your email before sending. 

8. Clean your email list

Sometimes low open rates can come down to the quality of your email list. Sometimes people sign up for an email list and then decide they no longer want to receive emails from you. People start new jobs and change their emails. Emails sometimes bounce because someone accidentally misspelled their email when signing up to your list. These are all good reasons why you should clean your email list regularly. How do you clean your email list? Go through each of your contacts in your email list, look at the number of opens for each contact and unsubscribe and delete contacts with zero opens. If they’re consistently not opening your emails, there’s a very good chance that they are just not interested in getting your emails anymore and it’s best to unsubscribe them.

9. Use a short subject line

The subject line length has a big impact on open rates. Researchers have found that shorter subject lines work best. Try to aim for 7 words or less in your subject line. The problem with using longer subject lines is that they usually get cut off, especially on mobile devices. The recommended subject line length is 41 characters or less. Try to keep subject lines short and sweet. They just look better too – emails with long subjects are spammy looking and you definitely don’t want your emails going into someone’s spam folder.

10. Use sentence case in your subject line
Not just what you write but how you write can have a positive or negative impact on open rates. That’s why we use sentence case in all of our subject lines. It’s more personal and casual and that’s what people seem to be drawn to.

11. Use emojis
If you are like most people, your inbox is drowning in emails. How to make your email stand out to customers? Emojis. Studies show that they increase open rates by as much as 29%. They add some color to your email subject line and they help break up the text more. Just make sure to use them appropriately and use only one emoji in your subject line.

12. Segment your contacts

If you have a business that has different products and services, you should consider segmenting your contacts. Segmenting helps to make sure that contacts are only getting the content that they are interested in. Segmenting works like this – you target your email content to a person’s interests. The downside of segmenting your contacts – you will have to create different types of content for different people in your audience and that takes more effort and time on your part.  The upside – your open rates will go up.

13. Use merge tags or personalization tags

Adding merge tags to your subject line can increase open rates by as much as 20%. They grab your attention when sifting through your inbox, pique your curiosity, and encourage you to act since the email is addressed to you by name.   

14. Use numbers in the subject line

There is just something about numbers! Numbers are said to increase open rates by up to 45%. It’s a good idea to experiment with using numbers in your subject lines. Some reasons why you should at least test numbers in your subject lines: they are hard to make up and they stand out.

15. Split-test different subject lines to different contacts

Never stop testing. Send emails with different versions of subject lines to different contacts in your audience and monitor your open rates. Maybe your audience prefers more of a formal tone in the subject line. Another audience might prefer a more fun, casual tone in the subject line. Every audience is different. Try to learn what works for yours. The only way to know is through testing.

Conclusion

Your open rate tells you how many opens your email campaigns get. The best way to improve your open rate is to monitor your opens, clean your email list regularly, personalize your emails, test your subject lines, and consistently provide value so people look forward to opening your email campaigns.