Looking to increase your marketing email open rates? You’re not alone. According to recent statistics, email marketing remains a viable and valuable venue for reaching today’s businesses and consumers. Consider this: In sheer numbers alone, active email accounts are slated to reach 5.6 billion in 2019 and continue to rise exponentially. And when it comes to business communications, three-quarters of companies agree email marketing programs provide excellent or good ROI using this practice.
But it’s not enough to simply craft compelling email marketing campaigns. For email marketing campaigns to be profitable, open rates for these messages need to be in good range. But how do you get there? Here we’ll look at seven of the best and most proven methods to increase email open rates.
1. Timing Is Everything
Studies have shown the days with the best open rates are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with rates being reduced on Mondays and Fridays. When it comes to the time of day most users view these messages, the mid-morning hours between 10:00 and 11:00 AM is consistently the highest.
Since this when many people are checking their inboxes, pitching these messages just prior to arrival these times is most effective. Recipients will be more accepting of these messages when they are one of the first ones they see.
It’s also important to remember to try out different times of day and look at your own metrics. When is your customer base opening and reading their emails? Don’t simply follow best practices blindly – always do what’s best for your business. Try sending out your email campaigns at different days and times, and then review your email open rates to see if there was a particular day and time that performed best.
2. Subject Line Situations
Love them or hate them, emojis grab attention. The use of emojis are popular on social media platforms, but they’re also great to use in email marketing campaigns. In fact, when inserted in the subject line, emails containing emojis have a 56% higher rate of opening compared to those without. So next time you need to come up with a catchy subject line, think of inserting an emoji or two.
It’s also important to A/B test subject lines. And surprisingly, when considering subject line material, only half of email marketers admit to testing different types of content for the best results. So, write a couple different subject lines and see what best resonates with your customers.
3. Maintaining Mobility
It almost goes without saying, given the omnipresence of mobile devices in today’s society, but its essential email messages are effectively optimized for use on mobile devices. Not convinced? Consider the following eye-opening statistics:
- The majority of research reports have concluded half of all emails are opened on mobile devices
- People on mobile devices check their emails three times more often than users on stationary equipment
- It’s estimated 80% of users will be checking their emails on mobile devices in the immediate future
- Over half of users are less likely to engage with a business if they’ve had a negative mobile experience
4. Personalization Practices
Recent research has revealed inserting a recipient’s first name into the subject line had higher click-through rates than those without. Given this information, it only stands to reason this means more people are opening these personalized messages. So start being polite and friendly and addressing people by their name!
5. Frequency Fails
Regardless of the importance of the information contained in any marketing campaign, bombarding someone’s email in-basket is a sure-fire way of losing their attention. Nearly 80% of consumers admit to unsubscribing from email platforms if a brand is sending them too many messages. In order to retain attention and loyalty and increase email open rates, ensure you’re not alienating your audience with a barrage of emails. To prevent this, it’s best to keep a detailed email marketing calendar that keeps track of when you’re sending emails and to who. This will help give you a clear picture of how frequently you’re sending emails to customers and prospects and will help you space them out appropriately.
6. Transactional Transcendence
According to reports, transactional emails are opened eight times more often than those that are not either business-related or associated with buying and selling. Be careful to avoid messages that could be perceived as being overly promotional. It’s always better to come off as a helpful, professional business advisor rather than a pushy salesperson.
7. Ditch Duplicates and Bounce Backs
With hundreds, often thousands, of email addresses in a marketing campaign, there’s always a portion of messages bouncing back as being undeliverable because they’re invalid. This could be due to data entry errors or typos and in some cases, users could be purposely providing false addresses to avoid receiving email messages in the future.
In any case, dealing with faulty addresses is a time-consuming hassle and a waste of valuable resources.
Looking to Increase Email Open Rates? We Can Help.
Fortunately, there’s a solution to this ongoing dilemma. Validity BriteVerify cleanses your email database and blocks future invalid emails from coming through so you can ensure your email marketing campaigns are only sent to real email addresses – and thus, real customers and prospects. Our email verification API can be added to anywhere you collect customer data and instantly validates the emails you collect. And to clean the email marketing list you already have, there’s our email list verification service. Simply drag your drag and drop your email list and we’ll show you the total number of emails valid and invalid. After verification is completed, you can download your list, or automatically unsubscribe invalid and risky emails from your campaigns.
Validate your emails and see an increase in your email open rates. Contact us today to schedule a free demonstration to see how our programs will save your company valuable time, resources, and money.