In order for any email marketing campaign to be successful, your emails need to be opened. If your leads don’t open your emails, they can’t be converted to paying customers with your compelling copy and helpful information.

To calculate your email open rate, simply take the number of people who open your email and divide that number by however many emails you sent (ignoring those that bounced). For example, if you sent 100 emails, and 5 of them bounced, that means 95 were delivered successfully. If 20 of those recipients opened that email, your email open rate for that campaign was 21%.

For newsletters, the average open rate across all industries is 20.92%. If you’re doing better than this, congratulations (although there’s always room for improvement). If you’re not, here are 5 ways to increase your open rate and get more people reading your emails:

1. Send at the Right Time

The day and time that you’re sending your emails can have a massive impact on your open rate. This will take some time to analyze, but you can use A/B testing to see when you’re likely to get the most opens.

According to MailChimp, the best day to send emails is Wednesday (followed closely by other weekdays), while the weekend is less preferable. Experian found that the afternoon is usually the best time to send emails, however, its best to use this data as a starting point and see what works with your audience.

2. Segment Your Lists

When your leads receive your emails, they’ll decide whether to open them based on whether they find them relevant.

The best way to make sure your emails are as relevant as possible? Segmentation.

The earlier you begin doing this, the better. Most email clients allow you to tag your subscribers based on their behavior- such as their engagement or whether they’ve purchased from you before.

This allows you to target each lead or customer depending on exactly where they are in the buyer’s journey.

3. Work on Your Subject Lines

This is the first thing that people see when your email hits their inbox, so it needs to be good. Your subject line has one job: To get people to click on your email and read more. You should spend just as long (or longer) on your subject line as you spend writing your email.

Here are a few ways to improve your subject lines:

Be Personal

Your target audience is being bombarded by emails from companies every day. If you’re speaking directly to your customers in your subject line, make sure you use their first name.

Don’t Over-Promise

Click-bait is annoying, and if you’re promising readers something amazing, and then you don’t deliver, you’re likely to see a massive increase in your unsubscribe rate.

Over-promising will temporarily increase your open rate, but you’re likely to lose subscribers and those who do stick around will be less likely to trust you next time.

A/B Test Your Subject Lines

A/B testing (or split testing), is when you send two different email subject lines out- each to half of your subscribers. This way, you can see which subject line is getting more opens, and then send this email to the other half of your subscribers.

This allows you to see which types of subject lines work best with your subscribers, so you can continue to tweak and improve.

Create FOMO

FOMO (or Fear of Missing Out) is applicable for everyone, and you can make the most of this by creating urgency and scarcity. Do this by using words like ‘alert,’ ‘important,’ ‘breaking,’ and ‘urgent.’ Make sure that you actually have a time-sensitive offer, otherwise, you’ll be over-promising.

Make Them Curious

Humans are naturally curious, and you can increase this curiosity by promising your target audience something they’ll find interesting, asking a question, or saying something unusual.

While there are many techniques for improving your subject lines, these will depend entirely upon your audience. Use A/B testing and monitor your open rates carefully to see what resonates with your leads and customers.

4. Know Your Audience

The better you know your audience, the easier it is to write emails and subject lines that they’ll find appealing. You need to know what they’re interested in, why they joined your list, and the questions you can answer or problems you can solve for them.

One way to do this is to create a survey or poll. This is an excellent way to collect data, and you can encourage your subscribers to take part by giving them a special deal or coupon code in return for their time.

You can also use “click reports” to see who is opening your emails and where they’re clicking to get a good idea of what they’re interested in.

5. Ditch the Corporate Speak

When you’re writing to your subscribers, avoid using words and terms that make you sound stuffy, distant, and corporate.

Never write to ‘our customers.’ Instead, use your subscribers’ first names, and use words like ‘you’, and ‘your.’

Subject lines and emails should be written like you’re talking to a friend, and not like you’re speaking to a large group of people. Use contractions, and consider ways you can write less formally (without ‘trying too hard’).

If you’re hoping to increase your open rate this year, the above tips will help you make it happen. Remember to test everything, and use hard data to make decisions based on when, how, and why you email your subscribers.

Serious about improving your email marketing? Get in touch today to learn how we can help.