Hacks For Improving Your Email Open Rates
Improving your email open rates could easily and possibly drastically increase your leads, conversions and sales. Finding tweaks that make that one buyer open an email from you that they wouldn’t have yesterday are therefore worth finding. But how can you go about it?
You could employ a copywriter, or do some serious study of copywriting yourself. Whether or not that sort of investment of time and money is worth it depends on your margins. If an extra sale or two would cover those costs then it’s a no brainer. Even lifting your open rates by a percent or two could be very profitable with the right sales funnel.
If you’ve been building a list for some time, analysing the current results could help in improving your email open rates. Most email systems will give you a breakdown on which emails are opened and which aren’t. A look back over a week, a month or several months of these stats can reveal some useful insights.
Is there something about your choice of headlines for example? Do certain types of headline get more opens? Do others bomb? Improving your email open rates could be as simple as just writing more headlines like the ones that have worked and less of the ones that don’t.
Timing And Re-Sending Ideas For Improving Your Email Open Rates
There are a few hacks you can use too. If you get a great open rate on an email for example try putting “RE:” and using it again.
Most systems like Aweber, will let you create a segment of the email addresses that didn’t open. It’s always worth sending another mail to only those with “I think you missed this…” or similar as a headline.
Changing the time of day your autoresponder sends emails might also be worth trying. There are lots of theories about the best day and best time to send emails. I’ve never really found a useable trend here but my subscribers are all over the world so there isn’t a one time fits all. If however yours are less spread out, experimenting with send times could be worth a try. Generally though stick to a set time once you’ve decided on one.
Another great way of improving your email open rates is to write emails as series. It’s a tried and tested trick to leave your audience wanting more. If there is some sort of prize at the end of the series – such as a free download – so much the better.
Improving your email open rates is one thing but it can be a mistake to get hooked on those numbers. If you have a great list of highly targeted subscribers, increasing your open rates from 5 to 6 or even 10% would be worthwhile. If on the other hand it’s a crappy list in the first place, who cares if more non action taking, non buyers open your mails?
Don’t Get Too Hooked On The Numbers
Like advertising click through rates and other stats, email open rates aren’t always particularly good indicators. But matched to accurate targeting and great messaging they make more sense.
Following up with customers either in person or by survey is another great way of improving your email open rates in future. This might not be practical if you are selling low cost items. But if you are in the high-ticket space it makes perfect sense. What could be better than asking your customers what made them buy from you? What could be more powerful than asking your subscribers (potential customers) what they want from you?
Its also good to bear in mind that improving your email open rates is just part of the equation. The copy that follows has to capitalise on that – a whole subject in itself.
Like all forms of optimising your marketing results, improving your email open rates is a multi-faceted thing. Any insights you can glean and put to good to use are part and parcel of the process.
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