Email marketing isn’t just about sending emails but increasing people’s chances to open your mail and take action. An obvious sign that your email marketing isn’t working is having low email open and click-through rates. This is why it’s essential to know how to increase your email open rates and your click-through rates. By the end of this post, you will know effective strategies to increase your email open and click-through rates.
What is Email Open Rate?
Open rate is an important email metric that shows the number of subscribers that opened or read an email. It is the total proportion of the email opened compared to the total emails delivered. Email open rates often show how engaging your subject lines and preview texts are. It’s best to know the average email open rates by industry so that you can set benchmarks for your campaigns.
Use this formula to calculate your email open rate:
Number of email opened
______________________ X 100
Number of emails delivered
What is Email Click-Through Rate?
The click-through rate (CTR) tells how many subscribers clicked the link you added to your email. CTR tends to be a more reliable way to know how good your email marketing strategy is. However, you need to know what affects your email open rates before improving your click-through rates. This is because subscribers won’t make a click if they didn’t even open the email in the first place.
Open rates and click-through rates show how people react to your emails and whether your conversions are good enough. By tracking these email metrics, you will be able to improve the performance of email and reach more users.
The email click-through rate formula is:
Number of clicks
————————- X 100
Number of Delivered emails
So if you have 70 emails delivered and ten clicks, your click-through rate is 14.3%.
Average Email Open and Click-Through Rate
It’s essential to know the average open and click-through rates is essential before improving your strategies. If your open rate is far less than the average open rate, you know you have to up your email strategy.
So what is a good email open rate?
According to Mailchimp, the average open rate for most industries is 20.81%. This means that if you have up to a 21% open rate, you are doing great. However, this rate may vary by industry.
Like the open rate, the average email click-through rate varies from business to business. However, the average click-through rate for most marketers is 7%.
Now that you know how to measure email open rates, you can determine if you’re doing well. All you need to do is compare your open/click-through rates to the average. You’re doing well if you have your rates higher than the average open and click-through rates!
Note: These percentages may differ depending on the industry, size of companies, and purpose of the email.
Tips to Increase Your Email Open Rates
You need to know that if people don’t open your email, they aren’t going to click it. For this reason, you have to know how to boost your email open rate before you can increase your click-through rate. Here are some tips to increase your email open rates:
1. Ask For Opt-In
You don’t want to dump emails on people who didn’t voluntarily sign up. They are likely not going to open it, and if they do, it’s probably to unsubscribe. Therefore, always ensure that people voluntarily opt-in to your subscription because quality is better than quantity.
Also, what affects email open rates the most is the interest of the people you are sending emails to. People who voluntarily opt into your subscription likely did so because they want to receive your email content. An excellent way to build a quality email list is by embedding pop-up forms on your website. You can also share your email link sign-up on different platforms to get people to subscribe.
2. Whitelist Your Email Address
Encourage subscribers to whitelist your email address by providing them with instructions. Whitelisting your email address will ensure that your messages go straight into their inbox rather than junk. Also, please don’t make your email look spammy because spam filters will categorize it as junk. Don’t use words like ‘free,’ include an unsubscribe button, and don’t use all uppercase for your subject line.
3. Send Emails at The Right Time
There is a right time and wrong time to send emails to subscribers. Learning how to boost email open rate isn’t complete if you don’t know the right time to send emails.
So, when is the perfect time to send emails?
There is no correct answer. The right time will vary according to your target audience, your industry, and the type of content you’re sending. Meanwhile, it’s best to send your emails at different times until you find something that works for you. Once you find a time that works best for you, be consistent with it.
4. Make Your Subject Line Compelling
Another tip on how to boost email open rates is making your subject line compelling. Many people base the decision to open an email on how the subject line interests them. It is the first thing subscribers see, so they will skip it if it doesn’t hook their attention. Your subject line should be short, simple, and relevant to the content.
Some email keywords that tend to evoke curiosity in people include:
- Avoid: e.g., Avoid These 3 Things When Applying For a Job
- How: e.g., How To Measure Email Open Rates In Just 2 Steps
- Find: e.g., Find Out The Best Way To Ace Your Visa Interview
- Stop: e.g., 3 Reasons Why You Should Stop Using One Payment Method
- If: e.g., What If You’ve Been Doing Content Marketing The Wrong Way?
Note: Don’t craft clickbait-y subject lines, and always make sure your email title is relevant to the content.
5. Be Creative With Your Preview Text
After the subject line comes the preview text. It’s not enough to draft a compelling subject line if the preview text is boring. The preview text gives a glimpse of the whole email, and if you use it well, it can boost your open rates.
One of the best ways to increase email open rates is by teasing subscribers about what to expect in your mail. Say your subject line is why your video marketing strategy isn’t working. Your preview test can go like this:
“Did you know only 50% of marketing videos convert? Here are the mistakes marketers are making with their videos.”
6. Use Power Words
Using power words in your email is a great way to arouse an emotional response in readers. Power words that increase email open rates often trigger the following emotional responses:
- Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)
Example: Here Is Your Last Chance To Order From Us
- Greed
Example: Get 99% off Our New Online Course
- Curiosity
Example: 3 Secrets SaaS Companies Don’t Want You To Know
- Exclusivity:
Example: Be The First To See Our New Lipgloss Collection
- Guilt:
Example: We Miss You! Here’s A Discount For Your Next Order
- Trust:
Example: Experts’ Opinion On How To Increase Open Rate in MailChimp
7. Personalize the Email
One of the best tips to boost your email open rate is personalization. It’s best to give a personal touch to your email to increase its open and click-through rates. A good idea is to refer to the receiver by their first name and also include your first name.
Consider these two email openers:
A: Hi Customer, get familiar with words that increase email open rates.
B: Hi Tasha, do you have trouble ordering from our platform?
Which of these two emails is likely to get Tasha’s attention?
A is the clear winner because it has Tasha’s name. It makes the email feel exclusive and will encourage the customer to open it. For this reason, It’s essential to personalize your emails as much as possible. One of the most effective words that increase the click-to-open rate is the receiver’s name. Try to include names and make your email sound like it’s coming from an actual person.
8. Send Re-engagement Emails
If you have a high number of deliveries but low open rates, a good idea is to resend emails. This is your chance to remind people of the email in case they missed the previous one. Also, you can send a follow-up on the previous email to increase the chances of people opening it.
Tips to Improve Your Email Click-Through Rate:
Now that you know how to increase email open rate, let’s move into the tips to increase your click-through rate.
1. Make Your Emails Mobile Friendly
It’s essential to make your email mobile-optimized to increase the chances of people reading it. If you don’t optimize your email for mobile, your recipient will have problems reading it, and it may end in the trash. Here are some tips to make your emails:
- Make it short
- Use bullet points
- Preview your test on mobile before sending
- Use formatting options to make your content more readable. E.g., capitalizing keywords and bolding takeaways.
2. Send Relevant Content
One of the things to consider when learning how to improve your email click-through rate is your content. Make sure the content you are sending provides value to the receiver.
Consider these two scenarios:
Scenario 1: Person A is a small business owner who gets an email about why their video marketing strategy isn’t working. At the end of the mail, there is a call to action linking to a platform suitable for creating great videos.
Scenario 2: Person B is a college professor who gets an email on how to increase open rate in MailChimp. There is a CTA offering a discount on MailChimp subscriptions.
Now, who is more likely to click the call to action? If your guess is Person A, you are right. The first email is relevant to the person receiving it, so they are likely to click the CTA.
3. Include Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing buttons make it easier for your recipients to share your emails and will increase your click rate. This means emails with social sharing buttons are more likely to get a higher click-to-open rate than emails without. Always include clickable buttons that link to your social media platforms to increase the number of shares.
4. Improve Your Call To Action (CTA)
You need to give people a reason to click on your website or a link. First, you need to add a Call to Action (CTA), and you also need to be strategic with it. It’s not a good idea to include multiple CTA in your email because it can be overwhelming for the readers. Some best practices on how to improve click-through rate in email through your CTA include:
- Put the CTA at the top of your email
- Use an action word to encourage
- Offer something of value
- Use active voice
- Add a CTA button that is big, bold, and clickable
5. Segment Your Email List
Another tip on how to improve your email click-through rate is by segmenting your email list. You can segment your email list according to customers’ tastes, interests, age groups, mutual connections, etc. This is important because your target audience won’t respond to the same value. For example, if your customers are 30% B2B sellers, 30% email marketers, 30% social media managers, and 10% college students.
An email on how to increase views on social media management tools will appeal more to social media managers. However, a message on how to improve clickthrough rate email is better for email marketers and B2B sellers. Therefore, It’s best to segment your email list to improve personalization and ensure you offer relevant information to subscribers.
6. Don’t Overwhelm Your Subscribers
Lastly, resist the urge to overwhelm your subscribers with too much content. It’s always tempting to send more emails, more content, more offers, and more CTAs. However, simplicity is key to increasing your click-through rates.
Knowing the best ways to increase email open rates and click-through rates will help improve your email marketing strategy. Remember to implement the strategies in this article until you find what works effectively for you.