5 Ways to Increase Email Open Rates

How do you increase email open rates so more subscribers read your emails?

Today, according to Radicati email report in 2018, 281,100,000 emails were sent and received each day. By the end of 2019, the number of emails sent is supposed to increase to 293.6 billion per day. The number of emails sent will continue to increase by five percent each year. By 2021, email is expected to grow to 319.6 billion emails sent per day.

First, these numbers are staggering. But, I am not surprised by the number of emails sent each day. Email is one of the most profitable marketing channels. Email is one of the only channels that you can communicate with prospects and customers regularly without incurring an expense each time you communicate.

How do you stand out when the inbox is so competitive?

Here are 5 simple things you can do to help ensure your emails get opened.

1. Onboarding Process

The first thing you need to consider is when people join your list, what is their experience?

Are you hammering them with an offer, or are you delivering on the promise that got them on your list?

How can you improve the experience for the person who opted-in to your list?

How can you make a better connection with the person?

Remember, technology can help us build stronger relationships with customers and prospects. It can help us lead them through the customer journey. 

How can you create a better experience for the people who first join your list?  

7 things to consider when planning the subscriber experience

• What does the landing page communicate to the customer?

• What happens once a person opts-in to your list?

• What happens on the thank-you page?

• What does your welcome email communicate?

• Are you delivering on your promises?

• Are you setting the expectations in the first email as far as what to expect?

• Are you establishing the guidelines for the relationship?

A person’s first experience and interaction with an organization goes a long way to building and establishing a long-term relationship. The first experience has an impact on future email open rates.

2. Send Consistently 

Recently, I had a conversation with a marketing director who told me, “We only send an email once every two or three months because we don’t want people unsubscribing.” I immediately explained that he was focusing on the wrong metric. Some people are going to unsubscribe if you email your list once per day, once a week, once per month or once a quarter. What is important is focusing on the people who open and click on the emails that you send.

I worked with a different organization which was only sending emails once every two months. We started sending an email newsletter once every week. Over time, the email open rates increased from 12.5% to 22%.  Make sure you are sending at least one email per week. Remember to pick a day and time each week and send the newsletter consistently.

Here are three reasons why consistently sending emails improves open rates:

1. People start expecting the email each week.
2. As people open and read the emails, it builds trust.
3. Once people start receiving value from the email, they start looking forward to the newsletter.

3. Provide Value in your Email

What type of content are you sending in your email?

Are you hammering people with offer after offer?

Or are you providing valuable content?

The content that you provide within your email helps improve open rates.

Today, content is how you differentiate yourself from your competition and everyone else.

Are your emails delivering valuable content?

4. Create Engagement

Email Engagement is the next step in building relationships with your subscribers. If you are sending consistently and providing valuable content, the next step is engaging your list.

Engaging your list is getting people to open your emails, to click on links, to reply, and to forward your emails. Creating engagement is a critical component of developing a healthy email list.

5. Build Relationships

When I think of building relationships online, I reflect on how people go from first meeting to developing a long-lasting friendship. What are the stages? What are the steps?

Building relationships online is no different then building relationships in real life.

So, when it comes to building relationships, it is all about building trust.

How do you build trust?

• How consistently are you sending the emails?
• Does the content provide value?
• Are people clicking on links?
• Are you engaging people within multiple ways on different online channels, like a Facebook group, on a podcast, on your blog, etc.?
• How many ways are you interacting with your community?

A multichannel approach will help increase your email open rates. Communicating with people in different ways will help people get to know like and trust you.

Remember, the three ways that you can increase email open rates are to plan the customer experience when they opt on to your list, send your emails consistently, provide valuable content, think about how you can increase engagement and always be thinking about building long-term relationships.

---

Are you building your email list?