Some people consider email marketing to be old fashioned and arguments about its demise have been going on for years. Regardless of how long that list of arguments become, email marketing continues to be one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing potency. In email marketing, the most important metric is the open rate, and many business owners use it to measure the effectiveness of their online marketing performance. A successful open rate should be around 20 percent. But how do you get this number? Is it even possible to get aim for a single email sent to be opened and read? Let’s look at some helpful tricks and techniques to help boost your open rates.
Strategy on email frequency
Sending out daily, weekly or monthly emails? When and how often should you send them out? At first, let’s talk about the strategy and frequency of your email marketing.
It’s important to know, how much do your subscribers want to hear from you. And this depends on your email marketing goal. Are you trying to increase sales? Or do you want to lead more visits to your website? Frequency of your emails matters. For example, special offers and news should be sent out more often, so readers stay updated about your offerings. Be sure that the content is interesting and relevant, in order to engage your target market. Email marketing helps to build meaningful relationships with your customers. Furthermore, it is an effective digital marketing tool for driving conversion rates to your website or webshop. So, don’t forget to use call to actions to let subscribers make a purchase or visit your website. In fact, email subscribers are more likely to click the CTA buttons than, for example, Facebook fans.
We have all experienced a full mailbox of emails and spam. Therefore, the frequency to send out shouldn’t be more than two emails per week. Emails are powerful and 61% of consumers want to receive them from brands they follow. But at the same time, companies need to know how to optimize them. The most common and frequent are weekly newsletters because of their short email body and simplicity. So every time you have a new idea or announcement, make sure to follow up with a newsletter!
It is difficult to predict the right time for sending emails out, but email analytics can help you check your rates, monitor engagement and trends, track email performance and explore why your emails are not being delivered. Another way is to test different days and times to see the effect on open rates. We recommend sending at the beginning of the week, at least before Wednesday, because people check their mailboxes after a long weekend and are excited to see what’s new from their favorite companies and brands.
Subject line
A subject line is the first line of simple text that receivers see when they get an email. Put simply, it says what an email is about. Therefore, a subject line shouldn’t be extended, but kept under 30 characters or approximately five to six words. Since readers want to scan through the emails quickly and are doing it usually through their smartphones, it is effective to keep the subject line short and simple.
Another important thing is to avoid “spam style”. That means avoiding promotional calls like “Buy now” or “Free” in the subject line. These objects will send your marketing emails straight to the spam or junk mail folder. Furthermore, it will negatively affect open rates.
Content
The main text of an email should be short and easily readable because the goal is to inform and introduce the latest news to your consumers. Try to avoid difficult corporate speech or tech talk. Information on the email body should be useful and relevant. Oh, and don’t send out emails if you have nothing to announce. Finally, you should focus on valuable and helpful content, because readers are looking for benefits – what can you offer that helps them – not useless noise, we have enough of that in our lives already! Clever titles are important as well as efficacious content, otherwise, an open rate will drop over time. Finally, dividing a text into shorter paragraphs is time-saving for the reader to scan through.
A formulation of the email can be created as a one-to-one talk. Receivers need to have a feeling of direct communication. Furthermore, they should think that the email was sent only to them, not to the wide mass. A great subject line is essential to getting high open rates more leads. Therefore, being personal is very impressive and it signals to spam filters that the email isn’t a junk mail. Including the receiver’s name to personalize the email is a plus. In the end, the email should always be sent from a person at the company. Don’t send it just from “the company” or “sales department”.
Email marketing platforms
In order to create emails that get traction and people open, you need the right tools. Luckily, there is a wealth of online marketing platforms for email marketing. These sophisticated services offer approachable email automation for your marketing campaigns.
For example, Constant Contact software comes with a 60-day free trial and is simple and user-friendly. It is a great choice for small business owners. It is one of the largest email marketing services in the world. For medium-sized businesses that want access to a wealth of marketing options, there is GetResponse. It comes with additions, such as landing page creator or webinar solution. MailChimp is the best solution for bloggers and small websites. This email marketing service provides a free plan and it is one of the leading providers, with over 1 billion emails sent per day. The costs of each platform depend on different pricing models based on email volume.
A/B testing
Split testing or A/B testing is a way of finding out which of 2 different campaigns is more effective when it comes to opens or clicks. You can easily monitor A/B test results from a graph, according to the performance metric you choose: open rate, total unique clicks or total clicks on the selected link. During this testing, it is not possible to change the campaign but you can easily cancel it before it’s sent to your readers.
There are three types of testing:
- Comparison of various subject lines
- “From name test” – when using different sender names and email addresses
- Email content – testing the elements of the campaign, such as titles, article length, call-to-action…
Conclusion
As mentioned above, there are many of the key factors that affect your campaign and determine the success of it. Firstly, create a short and simple subject line. Secondly, don’t forget to be personal and give the reader clear, valuable content. Additionally, test your campaigns with email testing tools before sending them out to your readers. And finally, don’t give up after just one try. Continue to improve, measure your results and focus on your desired goals, they will come sooner or later!
Like many businesses, Wiredelta is also using email marketing. You can sign up for our newsletters and get fresh news of the digital world every Monday morning!
