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8 Effective Tips To Improve Your Email Open Rates

Boost your open rates in emails with 8 effective tips, including an email open rate calculator. Learn how to improve your average open rates and engage your audience with Icegram's best practices.

Increase open rates

Last updated on October 10, 2023

If there is one daunting question that today’s digital marketers have, then it is- How effective are Email Marketing and the open rates in email?

A lot of marketers fail to understand that marketing a product is about providing value to your consumers/audience. This rule is especially liable in email marketing which by the way isn’t dead. It’s still considered an effective tool for conversions.

A high open rate will ensure that you have a good audience base and that the audience is interested in your content and of course, it’s a good way to earn a return on investment.

What Does Email Open Rate Mean?

It is the percentage of people that have successfully seen and opened your email campaign. The higher the percentage, the better the success of your campaign.

What is a good email open rate?

On average a good open rate would be somewhere between 15-25%. If you have an open rate which is 2% or less then it’s time to consider some good campaign optimization tricks.

There are a few reasons why your email campaign may be failing:

  1. Having more fake audience accounts than real ones
  2. Not having clear lists
  3. Restriction of the number of emails that you can send in a day

Typical email plug-ins are not effective in this scenario as they don’t have features like list creation and cleanup like our product. Icegram Express will ensure that redundant and fake accounts get eliminated and your lists stay focused in your WordPress domain. After all, you want to reach the right people.

Here are 6 effective tips to improve your email open rates:

  1. Use clear and compelling subject lines that accurately reflect the content of the email and entice the reader to open it.
  2. Segment your email list and send targeted emails to specific groups.
  3. Keep your email lists clean and up-to-date.
  4. Optimize the timing and frequency of your emails.
  5. Ensure your email content is grammatically proofread and includes pictures and infographics.
  6. Make sure your content is in clear precision of your topic.

A good email open rate is between 15-25%, and you can use Icegram Express to help with list creation, clean-up, and building forms for user data collection. Remember, email marketing is about providing value to your audience, so keep that in mind when crafting your emails.

If there is one daunting question that today’s digital marketers have, then it is- How effective is Email Marketing?

A lot of marketers fail to understand that marketing a product is about providing value to your consumers/audience. This rule is especially liable in email marketing which by the way isn’t dead. It’s still considered an effective tool for conversions.

A high open rate will ensure that you have a good audience base and that the audience is interested in your content and of course, it’s a good way to earn a return on investment.

So now that you know the importance of open rates, let’s discuss how you can achieve the same through some simple tips:

Headlines and Subjects

One effective tip is to use a clear and compelling subject line that accurately reflects the content of the email and entices the reader to open it.

The first thing that catches a person’s eye is the headline/subject line. Having a catchy headline gives an edge to your content. Now, we understand that not everyone may be good at creating catchy headlines, it needs practice. If you have bought Icegram Express (ES) then you may have headline swipe templates that you can choose from, this can cut down your work and enable you to focus on other areas of your campaign. A few helpful tips and examples that you can follow are:

  • Keep the headlines short

Email headlines get cut off when they’re too long. Hence, keeping them short will ensure that your recipient has read them.
E.g. Baking Tips at Your Rescue!

  • Make use of numbers in your headlines

Numbers are known to hook a person’s interest immediately. They invoke a subconscious reaction in the brain.
E.g. 10 Effective Ways to Use Baking Soda or Earn 10,000 Leads in Just 3 Days

  • Make sure your topic is clear

Your headline gives a gist of your entire content to the reader. It shouldn’t be too clever or too cryptic, it may leave your reader confused.
If your content is about feeding puppies then your headline could be: How To Feed New-Born Puppies or The Secrets of Huntington Beach

  • Ask questions

Questions help evoke curiosity. They’re a good way to create expectations about the content.
E.g. Are You Ready For These New Clothing Trends of 2022? Or Did You Know of These 5 Ways To Use a Blush?

  • Have a conversational tone

Conversational tones are a good way to personalize the feel of the write-up.
E.g. Here’s Why Political Debates Are Necessary Or Why I Sold My Shares in 2 Days.

Segmenting your lists

If you want to reach your audience in the most effective way possible, then you need to categorize them. This means segmenting your email list and sending targeted emails to specific groups. And the best part? This can increase the relevance and personalization of your emails, which in turn makes them more likely to be opened.

Let’s say you have a mixture of new and old users, as well as people living in different parts of the world. It might seem daunting to try and reach them all at once, but by segmenting your list, you can customize your approach and reach them in the most effective way possible.

Here are some key bullet points to keep in mind:

  • Segment your email list to reach different groups of users
  • Send targeted emails to specific groups to increase relevance and personalization
  • Use tools like Icegram Express to create different lists for different groups of users
  • Send customized email campaigns that resonate with your audience

And remember, segmenting your list is all about making sure you’re sending the right message to the right people.

Keeping cleaner lists

As we mentioned above, having a targeted audience list can go a long way to building a loyal audience base. While some plug-ins can help you create targeted lists, not all allow you to create and clean up your lists from time to time.

Optimize the timing of your emails, sending them when your audience is most likely to be checking their inbox. You should also consider the frequency of your emails, and avoid sending too many emails that may result in fatigue or too few emails that may be overlooked.

Icegram Express ensures that your lists stay up-to-date, it has a special feature which creates forms for your user base. This way, you’ll be able to collect user information, so you can build your lists and manage them accordingly. P.S.: The forms are customizable!

Optimizing email content

While you optimize blogs for more views, optimizing email is equivalent to gaining more clicks. Keep the following points in mind for optimizing content:

  • Ensure your content is grammatically proofread
  • Add pictures and infographics to enrich
  • Your content needs to be in clear precision of your topic
  • Make sure your images are of smaller sizes so as to not make the loading slow, an ideal size would be to have images that are less than 1 MB in size

Personalization is the key

Your content may be great, but is it personalized for effectiveness? It’s always better to write like you’re writing to a friend rather than for a general audience. This gives the email a feel of personalization rather than spam.

Additionally, using a catchy and visually appealing design, as well as including a clear call-to-action, can also help to improve your open rates. Finally, testing different approaches and analyzing the results can help you determine what works best for your audience and improve your open rates over time.

Hence, creating familiarity can engage customers and motivate them to open your emails in the future. To help you with the same, we do have some great templates for newsletters and post notifications in Icegram Express to enhance your campaign. If you don’t have Icegram Express then you can look at the below example to understand what we mean:

“Hi John,

How has your Sunday been? It has been an amazing week for our company and we thought you’d like to know about some recent developments …”

Sending emails at the right time and place

Timing is everything, especially in email marketing. After you create your list, the first thing you need to ensure is that you send the email at the right time. It can be tricky to operate full time especially if your audiences live in a different time zone. This can be hard work especially if your plug-in doesn’t have a scheduling option.

Hence, keeping this in mind, Icegram Express can help you schedule your emails to the right audience at the right time. All you have to do is build up a list, create content and then schedule it. Half your work is done right there!

Being Mobile friendly

Digital content begins and ends with mobile phones. The world does everything on mobile, including checking emails. Optimizing your email content to become more mobile-friendly is the best way to root for success for your campaign. Big brands are following up on the trend and ensuring that their offers don’t get missed. Here are a few examples we can learn from.

Track open rates from time to time

Tracking open rates from time to time will give you an understanding of your campaign’s performance. Apart from this, it will also suggest how many people are interested in your company. Hence, it is important to keep a tab on it.

The best way to track open rates would be to install an Icegram Express. It’s a tool that allows tracking of the open rates for free and it also analyses them to provide you with a detailed report on open rates as well as conversion rates. Not all plug-ins have the facility to give you an analysis of your campaign like Icegram Express. It’s designed for marketers by marketers.

The free version of Icegram Express is equipped with features that can help you with your campaign, however, the pro version is equipped to enhance your brand as a whole with quality features.

Go check this out!

 

What’s one thing you could improve in your next email campaign?

If you’re looking to improve your email campaign, there’s one thing you can focus on that can have a big impact: your email open rates. After all, if people aren’t opening your emails, they’re not going to be reading your message or taking any action.

So, what can you do to improve your email open rates? Here are a few tips:

  1. Make sure your subject line is attention-grabbing and relevant to your audience. This is often the first thing people see, so you want to make it count.
  2. Segment your email list and tailor your message to each group. People are more likely to open emails that feel personalized and relevant to them.
  3. Test different send times to see what works best for your audience. You might find that certain days of the week or times of day result in higher open rates.
  4. Keep your email copy concise and engaging. People have short attention spans, so you want to make sure your message is clear and compelling.
  5. Use an email open rate calculator to track your progress and see how your open rates compare to the industry average.

Remember, improving your email open rates is an ongoing process. Keep testing and refining your approach to see what works best for your audience.

Conclusion

Now that we have established the importance of gaining good open rates, it’s time to start considering the above steps. Inevitably marketers find innovative ways to land on an audience inbox and not spam. It’s a never-ending struggle, however, we hope that this article helps you in gaining some clarity. Share your views and opinions & leave a comment below.

FAQs

How do I increase my open rate for emails?

To increase your email open rate, you can try a few things. First, make sure your subject line is attention-grabbing and relevant to your audience. You could also consider segmenting your email list so that you can send more targeted messages to specific groups of people. Additionally, you could try sending your emails at different times of the day to see if that affects your open rates. And finally, make sure the content of your emails is high-quality and valuable to your readers so that they will be more likely to open and engage with your messages.

What is an Email Open Rate and How do you Calculate It?

An email open rate is the percentage of recipients who opened an email that you sent them. To calculate your email open rate, you divide the number of unique opens by the number of emails delivered (excluding bounces). For example, if you sent 1,000 emails and 200 people opened them, your open rate would be 20%.

What is an Average Email Open Rate?

The average email open rate varies by industry, but as of 2021, the overall average open rate is around 18%. However, this can vary significantly depending on your industry and the type of emails you are sending. It’s a good idea to research the average open rates for your specific industry and compare your own rates to that benchmark.

 

4 thoughts on “8 Effective Tips To Improve Your Email Open Rates

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