Are you a marketing professional who is worried about decreasing email open rates? Or are you someone who is interested in email marketing and wants to know more about how it works? You shouldn’t worry if your answer is yes because in this article we will talk about email marketing and the top strategies that can boost your email open rates.
With the scope of digital marketing increasing, the ways to connect with the audience have also increased. Email marketing is one of the earliest tools used in digital marketing to contact a large number of customers. Many thought that with the emergence of new technology email marketing may go out of trend.
In fact, email marketing not only continued with its operations but also became an integral part of every marketing strategy developed to date. Now, you can even send an email and have it received as an SMS using an email-to-SMS gateway. Compatible with Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and many more, these gateways have been designed to make life easier. With email marketing, one can make the customers aware of the various discounts, offers, along with new products and services. But email marketing only works when the customers open the mail. If the customer doesn’t open the email then they won’t be aware of any offer which will cause a decrease in prospective sales. The email open rate is the proportion of emails that are opened out of all the emails sent to people.
This is why it’s important to have an email marketing strategy that will help you write emails that will result in an increase in open rates. It is important to know how to write an email that will appeal to the target audience. You can learn those tricks by enrolling in an email marketing course, in which industry experts will guide you in developing your email marketing strategy.
For now, you can look at the top strategies we covered to get an idea of how you can improve your email marketing plan.
- Relevance To Target Audience
Content is the crux of every email. It is important that whatever you write in your email should be relevant to your target audience. If you send an email with very weak information or information that is not relevant to the target audience then the chances of them opening the email are quite low.
People are more interested in emails that provide them with information or are entertaining to read. Sending out emails that don’t provide any value or are in any way useful to them results in those emails being moved to spam or trash.
- Find The Right Time
Email marketing is a very easy but still tricky process. Other than the content what else matters the most is the timing. But how can we determine the perfect time to send the emails? The answer is that we can’t.
Every customer doesn’t have a set time of when they will open the emails. Some people like checking their emails the first in the morning, while others prefer reading it at the end of their day when they have more free time. So, there is no fixed time but what we can do is try sending them emails at different times of days and then conduct research regarding which time had led to more open rates.
- Personalized Emails
Around 72% of customers say they only interact with personalized messages, according to SmarterHQ. Personalized email marketing help brands build a sense of familiarity with the audience, which in return increases their trust quotient with the brand. Personalized emails are usually emails that are targeted to a certain individual by using the data the brand has collected.
The data could be anything such as their name, their likes, the products they have bought, location, etc. In addition to boosting open and click-through rates, adding a personal touch to your email campaigns can have a direct impact on ROI and revenue. By starting small and making minor changes like including a name or providing offers during specific times, you can avoid sending the same generic email and increase your open rates.
- Interesting Subject Lines
The first thing most email subscribers notice after receiving an email is the subject line. If they find the subject line interesting they may open the email to read the whole thing. The subject line is the first and sometimes the only chance that you have of grabbing the reader’s attention.
So, it is important that you write the subject line with absolute care keeping in mind what will appeal to your readers. As well as capturing their attention, the subject line should be short and precise and convey the content of the email.
- Experiment with Emojis
Many believe that emojis make emails appear unprofessional. But we would like to differ because using emojis in your emails can give them a personal touch. Emojis in your subject line add color to your message and make you appear more friendly.
They help by conveying emotion which will convince your readers that they are not getting generic emails from robots instead make them believe that someone is actually taking time to write it which will help you create camaraderie between the brand and the customer. But if you feel emoji may not work for your audience then you can try it once and then take your next decision based on the response you receive.
- Don’t Spam Your Customers
Every email marketer should know the most important rule – never spam your subscribers. The customer may decide to unsubscribe from your email list if they get annoyed by the constant emails.
You should always maintain a schedule of when to send and what to send by understanding your target audience. There is a high chance of your email ending up in spam if they exceed more than 4-8 per month, so make sure to send quality emails but make sure that you don’t send exceed a certain limit.
Conclusion
We hope that with this blog we have been able to make it easier for you to develop your next email marketing strategy. Email marketing is something that every digital marketer should be aware of as it is one easiest tool that they can use to connect with their customers.
But sometimes email marketing is just not enough, you need to also know about various other tactics and tools to increase customer engagement. That’s why we recommend you opt for an online digital marketing course so that you can gain more knowledge of email marketing as well as other marketing strategies and tools.
Author’s Bio
Karan Shah (Founder and CEO at IIDE)
Karan Shah is an Edu-preneur, Tedx speaker, Harvard alumnus specializing in eCommerce, and the founder of IIDE – The Digital School. He is a reputed author on the topics of education, digital marketing, and Ed-techs. Over the years he has penned a plethora of articles in leading news outlets such as Entrepreneur, BusinessWorld, Education Times and Youth Magazine to name a few.
For more articles, visit OD Blog.
