Email is still one of the best marketing channels you can use to build a relationship and communicate with your audience.
Despite the rise of social media, the humble email is still the go-to channel that many marketers choose to communicate with their audience, retain existing customers, and acquire new customers.
If you thought that email was dying, think again. It is estimated that there are 196 billion emails sent out daily! With numbers like that, you can see why email should be part of your digital marketing strategy.
But emails are only effective if they get opened! This post will give you some tips on how you can improve your email open rates.
What is an email open rate?
Email open rates sound pretty obvious to define, but it’s not as straightforward.
An email is only counted as opened when one of the following occurs:
- The reader enables images in your email to be displayed in the preview pane or in a full view of the email.
- The recipient clicks a link in the email.
How to calculate your email open rate?
Email service providers (ESP’s) calculate email open rate using the following formula:
The number of people who opened the emails divided by the total number of emails successfully sent that did not bounce i.e. failed to reach the recipient’s inbox for whatever reason (incorrect email address etc.)
Example: let’s say you sent 200 emails, of which 80 bounced (did not send). Of those 120 successfully sent emails, 60 are opened.
Your email open rate is therefore: 60/120 = 50% open rate.
How to improve your open rates
Now you know how to define and calculate your email open rates, here are some tips on how you can improve them.
1. Use a specific, personal name as your sender
The two things that people use to determine whether to open your email or not are:
- The name of the sender
- The subject line
Research on email subject lines conducted by Pinpointe marketing found that by using a specific personal name, instead of a general email address or company name, open rates increased by as much as 35%.
Just by using a specific, more personal sender name, you can dramatically increase your open rate. This is because emails sent from personal names are considered to be more personal and important to the recipient compared to emails sent with a generic company or business names which may be considered spam or advertising, and therefore not important enough to open.
2. Use 6 -10 words in your email subject lines
As mentioned above, in addition to the sender name, the subject line of your email is an important factor when it comes to influencing your readers to open your emails.
Your email subject lines are the same as headlines in an ad – they have the purpose of grabbing attention and making people want to read the rest of your message. Your email subject line should be compelling enough to grab your recipient’s attention and make them click.
An excellent report conducted by Retention Science found that email subject lines with 6 to 10 words deliver the highest open rate. This makes 8 words an ideal number for an email subject line, especially if your recipients are using mobile devices where the subject line character limit is shorter than on desktop.
A good rule of thumb is to write your email subject lines with mobile devices in mind, this will help you to avoid creating subject lines that are too long.
Click here for more tips on how to write email subject lines that increase your open rate.
3. Use the recipient’s name in the subject line
Although not as effective as it once was, using your recipient’s name in the subject line can still increase your open rate.
Emails that are sent with your recipient’s name in the subject line outperform emails sent without them. Again this comes down to making your emails more personal to the recipient.
The key to using this effectively is to incorporate their name in a well-crafted subject line, rather than just using “Hey John” for example.
Example: John check out our latest offers – 50% off everything!
4. Send your emails on Tuesday
Market research conducted by Get Response found that the best day to send emails in order to get the highest open rate is on Tuesday.
This is because on Monday people are catching up with things after the weekend and will likely have a lot of emails to go through, therefore they are more selective in what they open and read, etc.
Your email may not be considered priority enough to open first thing on a busy Monday morning. In order to avoid competing for priority on a busy Monday morning, send your emails on Tuesday instead. On Tuesday people are more likely to open and read your email as they have more time due to not having to catch up with as many things and other emails as they typically do on Monday, so it’s a good idea to schedule your emails to be sent out on this day.
5. 10 am and 1 pm are the best times to send emails
So we know that Tuesday outperforms all other days when it comes to email open rates, but is there a specific time that performs better than others? There certainly is. Studies have shown that email open rates increase around 10 am and 1 pm.
Again, this is probably due to people’s work schedules. Most people start work at 9 am and may take some time catching up with colleagues, grabbing a coffee, or having some breakfast, so by 10 am they have settled down and are more likely to be sitting at their desks going through their emails.
1 pm is an effective time as people have either just finished their lunch and are catching up on their emails, or they are just starting their break and are checking their emails whilst having lunch.
Summary
If you want to increase your open rates you should keep the following points in mind:
- Use a specific, personal name as your sender
- Use 6 -10 words in your email subject lines
- Use the recipient’s name in the subject line
- Send your emails on Tuesday
- 10 am and 1 pm are the best times to send your emails
Test out the above recommendations and see if your open rate increases.
Of course, you have to keep in mind your target audience and market when it comes to creating your email campaign, so you may have to tweak and test some of the suggestions to tailor them to your niche.
