- The secret to getting a 30% email open rate.
On average, for every dollar you spend on email marketing
you can earn $36 according to Constant Contact.
And if you are a top performer,
for every dollar you spend, you can earn $70.
But here's the thing, if no one opens up your emails,
you'll never earn $7 or even $36.
So let's fix that by not only helping you
get your emails open,
but let's make them better than average.
According to MailChimp, the average open rate
for all industries is 20.33%
but I'm getting a 30 plus percent open rate
literally on almost every single one of my emails.
And our clients at NP Digital
are also getting high open rates of 30%,
and in many cases above 40%.
Look, as I mentioned, email marketing
is an absolute gold mine,
but we have to get your emails open.
So let's dive into a few simple strategies.
Strategy number one, make your emails more conversational.
A simple way to do this is try addressing
the recipient's name in the subject line.
It makes your emails more personal
and causes them to open them.
And when doing this, use people's name
instead of their company.
Remember, it's a person opening up that email,
not a faceless company.
This also helps build a sense of familiarity
so that the person feels seen as if your email
was a tool for building a relationship.
An interesting stat for you is that 64%
of recipients make a decision on whether
or not to open up a email based on the subject line.
So make sure your subject line is amazing.
Campaign Monitor also says that subject lines
with 41 characters is an optimal length,
but I found that my open rates tend to be the best
when I keep my subject line to three words max.
In essence, less is more.
Strategy number two, subscriber segmentation
is one of the most effective
email marketing campaign strategies.
You might have the best offer out there,
but it means nothing if it's not going to the right person.
Target your audience based on location,
interest, purchase history, and other major factors.
And once your email is open,
your offer will be right there ready for them to convert.
According to Snov, segmenting your list
by interest increases open rates by 39%.
What I like to do with my segmentation list
is mainly use the locations,
because we are a global company.
And the services we offer are different per country.
In addition to that, the biggest thing
that has affected my segmentation
is buyers versus non-buyers.
I recommend having two lists.
You'll find that your buyers are more active
than non-buyers, and you'll want to send them
different emails as they're already customers.
Strategy number three, avoid spam folders.
Getting sent to the spam folder
is a death sentence for your email list.
Send your campaigns from a good, reputable IP address.
The way you do this is twofold.
You can either warm up your IP address
by slowly sending emails and increasing the volume per day.
So you may start off with like
100 emails a day one day and then 500 in day two,
and then 1000 day three, and then 2,000 day four,
3,000 day five, 5,000 day six
and maybe even 10,000 in day seven.
You get how I'm slowly warming it up?
Most people don't have that big of a list,
so you're probably going to warm yours up even slower.
In essence, you want to ease into sending a lot of emails.
You wouldn't just send 10,000 emails on day one
because you have to build trust
with the email clients such as Gmail and Outlook.
Another strategy that I love doing
and most people don't do this,
I don't know why, because everyone's like
I want a dedicated IP with my email address.
Well, I like piggybacking on someone else's IP.
A lot of email providers, like Convert Kit,
have shared IPs, which is great
because you don't want to warm up your IP address.
It's better for you to leverage other people's
amazing reputation and trust with those email platforms.
Also, make sure all your users have opted in for your emails
and avoid excessively salesy language.
Include transparent methods for them
to also opt out of your emails.
So then that way you're not continually
sending people emails who don't want them.
And what I like doing is to not send people emails
if they continually don't open up your emails.
In essence, if I send someone four emails
over a period of let's say a month
and none of them get opened,
I put them in a re-engagement campaign
and then send them a super enticing email
that they may open such as a email marketing email
with amazing ebook that usually costs money,
but I'm giving it away for free.
It hopes that they open that email.
If they open the email,
then I move them back to my regular list.
If not, I delete that email address.
Because if you keep sending people emails
when they aren't opening it,
it causes the email platforms to just put
all your emails, or the majority of them, in the spam box.
Strategy number four, give value.
This sounds simple, but if your emails offer value,
people will open them.
If they don't, they won't open them.
So when sending emails, keep that in mind.
Sure, you may need to sell them on something
every once in a while, but offer a ton of value.
That way, people look forward to your emails
and will want to open them.
I know this one sounds obvious,
but you'll be shocked on how many people
forget to do it, it's basic.
Strategy number five, time your emails.
I don't know why people love sending emails
in the middle of the night.
Every morning when I wake up,
I have hundreds of unread emails in my inbox.
When I wake up, I see all these unread emails.
And what do most people do?
They ignore them.
Why?
Because no one's going to want to read
50, 60, 70, 100 emails,
they just look for the important ones.
Now, if people were using segmenting,
they would know not to send me emails at night
because you can segment by time zone.
So what a lot of marketers don't realize is
if people have tons of emails over the weekend
or at night, they usually ignore many of those emails
or just mark them as read due to laziness.
Don't be at the bottom of someone's email inbox.
Be at the top.
Send your emails when they're more likely to read them,
such as a weekday or in the early mornings,
so you are at the top of their inbox
when they start going through the emails.
Strategy six, write like a friend.
I have a question for you.
When you get an email from a friend, do you open it?
Well, of course you do.
If you don't, you probably missed it by accident
or they're not really your friend.
Now, what about an email pitching you on something?
Chances are, you're going to ignore it.
If your emails are written as if they're casual,
as if you are writing an email to a friend,
it'll get open more.
The easiest way to do this
is make your subject line lowercase.
In other words, don't capitalize the first letter
in each word and make your subject line super proper.
Instead, make it casual.
A lot of times I just like using
all lowercase letters in my subject line.
I find this to increase my open rates
by roughly 3.43% when I use the strategy.
Doesn't seem like a lot, but every little bit adds up.
Strategy seven, A/B testing.
Did you know that according to Smart Insights,
60% of companies use A/B testing to maximize conversions?
If you don't know what works,
try multiple methods and you can see what sticks
and what's doing an amazing job in getting your emails open.
I love sending out emails with the A/B subject line.
In other words, half the group gets one subject line,
the other group gets another subject line.
And typically, with most email platforms,
they may test out the subject line
to a few hundred or a few thousand of your subscriber base,
and whatever one converts better,
they then take that subject line
and send it out to the rest, so you get the most opens.
And this gives you insights
on what you should do in the future.
It's like getting customer feedback
without even making people fill out a survey.
Now, follow those tips and you'll be off
and getting 30 plus percent open rates
like I do in my agency.
Now, if you need help with your email marketing,
check out NP Digital, where we are the Agency of the Year
and we help companies grow through email marketing,
as well as all other forms of digital marketing.
If you just have any questions, leave a comment below.
I'm here to help and answer them as well.