How to Increase Your Email Marketing Open Rate

Photo by Tumisu on Pixabay ‍ An effective email marketing strategy is an essential tool for any business. It can also be a challenging one, especially as marketers continue to look for ways to stand out. But that’s not all. The real challenge is how to increase your email open rate? It’s not easy to make people read our emails and click on the link in them, but it is possible. Read on to learn more about this topic and how you can boost your open rates. Know your audience Your email marketing campaign will be more effective if you have a solid understanding of your audience. To do this, you’ll need to do some research and analytics. Ask yourself these questions: who are your readers? Where are they based? What are their interests? What kind of language do they respond to? To gather more information, you can use a survey tool like Typeform. You can also try social media to see what people are talking about in your niche. By better understanding your audience, you can create content that is more likely to resonate with them and, therefore, encourage a higher open rate. Use compelling subject lines Your subject line is the very first thing people see when they receive your email. It’s the first thing that gives them a taste of what’s inside the email. So, your subject line must be engaging and interesting enough to grab the reader’s attention. Your subject line is one of the main factors that determine whether or not a recipient will open your email. Research shows that if your email subject line isn’t compelling enough, people will simply hit the delete button and move on with their day. Another important thing about subject lines is that they are often the deciding factor for whether or not someone will click on your link. So, if you want to increase the open rate of your emails and drive more traffic to your website, you need to make sure your subject line is strong enough to do the job. Optimize your emails for mobile view As the majority of email marketing is done via mobile devices, it’s essential that your emails look good on these handheld devices. If your email is not optimized for mobile, it will be displayed incorrectly — possibly with ugly fonts and graphics. If this happens, your readers won’t see your beautiful design: they’ll see something that looks unprofessional. In addition to this, a non-optimized email might take a long time to load and could be marked as spam. So, if you want to increase your open rate, it’s a good idea to make sure your emails are optimized for mobile. Send at the right time One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is sending emails at the wrong time. You wouldn’t talk to your friends and family at 3 a.m., and you shouldn’t send emails when your subscribers are sleeping. Many people have strict rules about when they open and respond to emails. If you break these rules, you will get a lower open rate. There is no golden rule for when you should send emails. However, there are two insights you should keep in mind: your viewers’ habits and the industry you’re in. When analyzing your audience, consider their daily activities and habits. What times are they most likely to open your emails? You might want to send your emails at the end of the day or on the weekend when people have more time to respond. Alternatively, you might want to send emails early in the morning when people are just waking up. Use strong call-to-actions When you send emails to your subscribers, the goal is to get them to do something: click on a link, visit your site, sign up for your mailing list. A call-to-action (CTA) is the instruction you give for your readers to take action. Most emails will have a CTA of some sort, but few emails use strong and effective CTAs. A strong CTA will encourage your readers to take action. It will be clear and concise — it will give the reader exactly what they need. A weak CTA might confuse your readers. It might make them wonder what they should do. A weak CTA might leave them with more questions than answers. Make your emails look beautiful Marketers often overlook the fact that users are more likely to open attractive emails than boring ones. If you’re looking for ways to increase your email open rate, you might want to consider upping the aesthetic value of your emails. Your emails should look good: they should be visually appealing. They should have a strong color scheme and be easy to scan and read. The more attractive your emails are, the more likely people are to open them. If you’re struggling to make your emails look great, you can always outsource the design work to a professional designer. Or, you could use free tools like Canva or DesignCrowd to create your own beautiful email templates. Conclusion Email is still one of the most effective marketing tools today. It gives your business the opportunity to build long-lasting relationships with your customers and clients. But to make the most of this opportunity, you need to optimize your emails — make them more likely to be opened and clicked on. Follow these tips to increase your email marketing open rate and make your emails more effective.