Are you worried about low email open rates? Don't, cause we are here to help.

The success of a mail campaign depends primarily on the email open rates. There are other factors, such as click-through rates, deliverability rates, conversion rates, and others, but the first concern of any mail marketer is the open rate.

If you wish your mail campaigns to generate revenue, dive in to know how to increase open rates. In this blog post, let’s discuss why your email open rates are falling and how you can improve them.

So, without further ado, let's jump in.

What Exactly is Email Open Rate?

Email open rate measures how many subscribers open a particular mail. It is a ratio between the number of emails open and the number of subscribers.

It means if your open mail rate is 35%, the mail has been opened by 35 people out of 100 subscribers.

Usually, marketers use this data to determine a campaign's success.

17%-28% is considered an excellent open rate. However, the actual numbers vary based on the industry and particular campaign.

Why Is Your Email Open Rate Low?

Multiple reasons for your emails not reaching the desired email open rate might exist. It includes the relevance of your mail to your subscribers, lengthy and dull mail copy, no sense of urgency, and the time you choose to send the emails to them.

Here are the most common reasons behind mail open rates:

1. Outdated Email List

No matter how consistently you send emails to your subscribers, there will always be people who don't want to receive your emails. They might not be interested in your product/service anymore, or they don't find your content valuable.

Before sending any email, it is fair to ask your subscribers to opt-in for emails. Tricking your customers into signing up for emails is not an appropriate practice. It often leads to ending up in the spam folder, ignoring, or landing in the trash.

2. Email Sending Time

Let us break it to you: there is no right time for sending emails. Although many businesses prefer sending emails during standard work hours, there's no hard and fast rule about it.

People usually choose their mail checking time according to their lifestyle and field of work–some do it in the morning, evening, or even at night.

As there's no setup time for it, send emails at various times of the day, check what time works best for your organization, and stick to it.

3. Boring Subject Lines

Subject lines may be short, but they play a vital role in a mail campaign's success. A survey conducted by Exceleads reveals that 33% of all mail recipients open emails only based on the subject line.

So, if your mail open rate is lower than you expected, you might want to rewrite your mail subject lines.

Your subject line should contain as much information as possible. Also, including your prospect's name in the mail subject line personalizes your message and increases mail open rates.

4. Lack of Personalization

In another insightful survey, 63% of participants said they don't open emails if they are not personalized. If you are constantly seeing a decline in your mail open rates, it might be because of non-personalization.

A/B testing or split testing can be an ideal solution for that. You can write multiple personalized copies and test them within your organization before sending them out.

5. Not Providing Value

Providing value is absolutely necessary for better performance of your emails. If your subscribers have gained nothing from your previous emails, the chances of a lower mail open rate are high.

So, try to provide value to your customers. Add personalized problem-solving measures, stats, or informative insights to your emails.

How to Increase Email Open Rate?

Here are a few ways to boost your email open rates.

1. Keep Your List Updated

A bunch of unresponsive subscribers on your list means you are practically missing out on potential revenue.

You may already know that many marketing experts suggest consistently sending emails to your subscribers so that the communication doesn't dry up. However, even after sending timely emails, you may see a downfall in your mail open rates.

You can safely assume that some of your subscribers may have changed their mail addresses or aren't interested in your product/service for the time being.

So, it is essential to clean up your list and remove inactive subscribers from it. You can consider any subscriber who is not active for at least six months or more.

There are a few ways you can win back your subscribers. Here's how:

• Run a win-back mail campaign
• Offer them personalized email content and information
• Run a survey and offer a token prize for participation

Cleaning your mail list is a lot easier with a list cleaning service. Smartlead.ai generates leads through multi-channel research (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, etc.) and verifies them to offer you an updated and relevant mailing list.

2. Humor Can Save the Day

Nothing beats a humorous chuckle, right? It works for mail as well.

If you want to increase your mail open rates, focus on writing compelling yet humorous mails. However, try to refrain from using sarcasm in your mails.

Using humor in your mail content helps build connection and trust. Humorous mail can create a sense of trust and friendship, and personal touch to communication.

In order to be funny, don't forget to provide value to your customers.

3. A/B Testing is a Must

Split testing or A/B testing is an impromptu user experience researching method. Have you ever written more than one mail subject line and been confused about which one to finalize? Well, you can easily decide through A/B testing.

It helps you get a clear understanding of the drawbacks of your campaign and how you can do better.

Not only subject lines or mail content but you can also A/B test images, CTAs, templates, etc.

A/B testing (split testing) is a proven methodology to test your content based on user intent and helps increase email open rates.

4. Titillate Curiosity

Mail marketing has only two purposes: to provide value to your customer, and the last but most important one is to get them to take action. So, what can you do other than add a CTA?

The subject line is the first thing that catches one's eye. So, writing a subject line that can trigger your audience's Curiosity can help you increase mail open rates.

Teasing, for instance, works best as a titillating subject line. You can also take advantage of your subscribers' FOMO to create an air of suspense.

Here are some excellent examples:

• 'Did you know….'
• 'All your friends are here'
• 'Daniel, I am dying to tell you that….'
• 'Have you heard about….'

This is how you can create engaging subject lines to hook our audience. It will increase mail open rates and conversions.

5. Express with Emojis

Although it is a much-debated topic, using emojis to enhance your email content can help you generate higher email open rates.

Many experts will argue that emojis are inappropriate for mail, specifically business mail. But we beg to differ.

Emojis are a popular communication medium nowadays, and it indeed has their place in business emails as well. So, stop worrying and utilize emojis to make your mails enjoyable.

It will increase not only the readability but also deliverability rates.

6. Segment Your Email List

According to a recent survey conducted by Lyris, companies that segment their mail list tend to experience 39% higher email open rates. 28% of the total participants saw lower unsubscribe rates.

Even if your mail is optimized and lands directly in the primary folder, your audience may not open it because of the intent. If your campaign doesn't provide any value to the subscribers, they will not open it.

The data mentioned above also proves the same. If your mail open rates go up, you should segment your mail list for different email campaigns.

7. Address by the Name

Rather than using salutations like 'Dear subscriber,' 'To whom it may concern,' or 'Dear valued customer,' try to build a solid connection with your customer by referring to them by their first names.

The psychological explanation is that people feel validated whenever someone addresses them by their first Name.

Whenever you send a mail addressing your prospects by their own names, they will automatically feel connected. It might be overwhelming to believe, but using prospects' first names increases mail open rates by 21.2%.

8. Run Surveys

Probably nothing can work better than a short surrey campaign to boost mail open rates. This is a tried and tested method for engaging your target audience.

Make sure your survey doesn't take up much time and is fairly straightforward. Encourage everyone to participate and offer monetary or other prizes or completion. You can provide gift vouchers, small cashbacks, etc.

Always try to mention the participation prize in the mail subject line, but do not sound salesy, as it will get caught by spam filters.

9. Provide the Option to Unsubscribe

It is crucial to provide your customers the option to opt-out of your mailing list. Although you would never want to go that way, according to laws like GDPR or CAN-SPAM act, any business mail should contain the option to unsubscribe.

We'd recommend you add an 'Unsubscribe' button in your mail. It will help you in removing the subscribers who don't want to receive your mail and keep your list fresh.

It also builds trust among customers and is usually considered a good business practice.

Here are some tips for adding the unsubscribe button:

• Make it humorous
• Add either on top or bottom of the mail
• Ask why your subscribers are considering opting out
• Ask them to add a preference

10. Proofread Your Mails

You don't want your subscribers to receive faulty mail. Besides the embarrassment, it can indicate many things–unprofessionalism, carelessness, and lack of attention.

So, before launching an email campaign, ensure your mail is error-free. Proofread the entire thing at least twice. It would be great if a third person could review it. It's also a good idea to use online tools for this same purpose. You can use an online grammar checker to find and remove grammar/spelling-related errors in your content.

It will significantly improve deliverability rates and the chances of mail open.

11. Send Limited Emails: Don't Act Clingy

Nobody likes a company that continuously sends mail to its subscribers. We understand that you want to keep in touch with your subscribers and don't want to miss out on increasing conversion rates.

However, sending continuous mails has more negatives than positives.

Regular mails can wear out your loyal customers, and they may feel irritated. And as a result, they may unsubscribe from your list to keep their inbox clean.

So, flooding your subscribers' inboxes with mails is never a good option. You can automate your campaigns with mail automation tools such as Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, etc.

12. Ask Subscribers to Add Preferences

One size fits all–doesn't work regarding your subscribers' interests. Some might want to read your newsletters, while others only want to receive updates.

So, sending a newsletter to someone who doesn't require it will lead your mails to the spam folder. It may also cause a soft bounce.

So, ask your audience about their preferences and update your list. It will help you keep a clean and fresh lead list and also help you avoid bounceback.

13. Watch Out, Spam Filters

Forget about mail open rates; spam mail has no chance of being opened. Also, repeated hard bounce and soft bounce may blacklist your IP.

No matter what email service provider your subscribers use, spam filters are more powerful than before.

Take these measures to avoid spam filters:

• Do not use spam trigger words like 'discount,' 'sale,' 'free,' 'give out,' etc. in your subject line. And try to avoid these words in the content as well.
• Use whitelisted IP addresses. You can use Smartlead for unlimited business email accounts.
• Provide your customers with an 'Unsubscribe' button.
• Optimize your mail with brand logos, taglines, images, and templates.
• Check your content for plagiarism. Plagiarized content has a high chance of ending in the spam folder.
• Request your subscribers/clients to whitelist your address.
• Add the physical address of your business and contact info in these emails.
• Always use lowercase letters for email subject lines.
• Your subject line should be in coherence with the content. A misleading subject line can lead your mail to the spam folder.
• Verify and update your list after a few months.

You might be thinking about the relation between spam filters and email open rate. If you reduce the chances of getting marked as spam, your email open rate automatically increases.

14. Make Sense with Your Content

If you are email marketing, do it well, or else don't. Bad email marketing practices harm more than no email marketing.

So, create your campaigns carefully and provide value to your customers. If you send mails only for marketing purposes, your email subscribers will get bored and eventually unsubscribe from your list.

So, a diversified cold outreach campaign can help you increase email open rates.

15. Call to Action

A call to action is essential for marketing campaigns. However, the intent of CTAs shouldn't be the same. You can ask to join a webinar, participate in quizzes, fill up feedback forms, etc.

A constant engagement with your customers can help you generate positive responses in email open rates.

16. Social Proof

Everybody loves to see results. Providing numbers (statistics) on your email subject line can increase email open rates.

Here's an example: "72% are getting hikes".

This sentence automatically makes you feel left out, which triggers your FOMO. So, whenever you provide stats like that, your audience will get curious and open the mail.

Conclusion

Well, we've reached the end. It might be a little complicated, but don't get scared. Writing a mail that generates more engagement requires practice.

So, get started with your email marketing campaigns. Don't forget to add the sender name and address.

Here's a brief checklist you need to maintain to increase the email open rate:

• Maintain a time of day
• Update the contact list and keep a segmented list
• Maintain sender reputation (spam score)
• Use mail marketing tool for automation
• Responsive email templates
• Add the CTA button
• Ask to get whitelisted

I hope this checklist will be handy while writing the following mail content.

See you next time, goodbye!

FAQs

1. What is a good mail open rate?

Email open rates vary based on industries and the types of campaigns. However, 17%-28% of mail open is considered a successful campaign.

2. Are there any tools to create mail content?

Smartlead.ai is an excellent tool that offers mail warmup, AI-personalization, pre-set spam triggers, email list verification, and lead generation. You can create personalized mails for your customers with the help of the AI-powered writing tool.

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