When doing email marketing the first thing you need people to do is open the email you sent them. If you don't get your recipients to open your email, that great fancy email you have created is worthless because no one saw it. Increasing your open rate is key to improving your email marketing. When looking to increase your open rate their are four places to look that will impact your open rate
Four Ways To Increase Open Rates Of Your Email Marketing
1. From Line
2. Subject Line
3. Time Of Send
4. Day Of Send
1. From Line
When looking at the from line I recommend putting a real person's name. From testing I have completed I have determined that using a person's name can result in a 25%-75% higher open rate. This really makes sense when you think about it. What is more likely to trigger thoughts of spam...a person's name or a company's name.
2. Subject Line
There are a couple keys to keep in mind when trying to optimize your subject line to maximize your open rate. The first is to keep the subject line as short as possible. Anything over 35 characters will significantly reduce you open rate. The shorter the better. For example instead of using "How you can save time and be more productive" a shorter subject line like "Save time" will perform significantly better. The way in which you write the subject line is important as well. Lower case letters will work better than using title case. Using all upper case letters can be used to increase open rate but it can only be used sparingly and not for all words in the subject line. If you use all upper case letter more than once every few emails it will lose its affect and people will be more likely to mark your messages as spam. Instead only send subject lines with all upper case letters maybe once or twice a year. Finally, in your subject line you should reference or make a statement that is of interest to your recipient. If the subject line is simply about your company you will have a lower open rate. Think about what is in it for them, would you open the email if you were in their shoes.....
3. Time Of Send
Time of send can have a significant impact on what open rates you get from your email marketing. Simply sending at 8:30 am vs 9:30 am can have a huge impact. Optimizing your time of send can result in improvements to your open rate of 50-100%. Think about what kind of an impact that can have. If you are selling something with your email marketing and your conversion rate stays the same, that means you can increase your sales by 50-100%. Where else can you increase sales that dramatically so easily?
The time of day that I have found to work best for my clients is almost always between 8:15 and 8:30. All of my clients are business to business companies so if you are a business to consumer company that may not be the optimal time to send for your company. Based on research I have completed it appears that 6:30 am is the best time to send for business to consumer companies. What I would recommend is that you test different times of send with exactly the same from title, subject line and sending them on the same day to determine what time of send works best for your company. Each industry is unique, but 8:15 am is probably a great place to start and test to see if you can get a higher open rate at a different time of day.
4. Day Of Send
As with time of send, day of send can also greatly increase your open rate. In my experience when day of send is optimized it can result in a 50-75% increase in open rates. Again I would recommend testing multiple days to determine what day works best for your email list as each list is unique. To test, send an email with exactly the same from title, subject line and at the same time of day on every day of the week to a different sub segment of your email list. From the results of these tests it should become very clear what is the best day to send. If you have a small list don't test all days of the week in one week. Instead test Monday vs Tuesday. Then the next time you send an email test Wednesday vs the day that performed the best and so on. In my experience Thursday is the best day of the week to send emails but many reports I have read indicate that Monday or Tuesday is the best day for most business. Again each list is unique so the only way to find out is to test.
Email marketing should only be one part of your greater marketing plan. Even more important than increasing your open rate is to ensure your email marketing makes sense with your greater marketing strategy and plan. If you don't currently have a marketing plan for your business that is documented I would highly advise that you create on one today.
