The Studio Journal

Are you looking to enhance your email marketing strategy and boost email open rates? Discover the importance of email open rates and five actionable tips to improve them.

Many consider email marketing the best bang for your buck. While some believe email marketing is dead, it’s actually the most commonly used form of communication today. Every day, people send 182.9 billion emails compared to Facebook’s 2.7 billion “Likes” (Radicati 2013; Brodie 2013). And if done right, email marketing has a return on investment (ROI) of 42:1 (Litmus). This means that for every $1 spent, companies can expect $42 in revenue. High email open rates are critical as they are a primary indicator of engagement, directly influencing ROI by determining how many potential customers are actually considering your offers.

One of the greatest barriers to getting these results is getting people to open emails. In 2020, the average email open rate was 18.1% (Campaign Monitor a). But this rate can vary significantly. The retail industry’s open rate was only 12.6% in this same year. How do your email open rates compare?

If people won’t open your emails, you won’t get that nice return on investment you want. So how can business owners improve these numbers and increase email open rates? While there are many ways to increase open rates, the suggestions below are the five easiest and sure-fire ways to increase your open rates today.

1. Enhance email open rates by making the sender in the “From” line a real person.

Let’s take two scenarios. Imagine you receive an email from a sender labeled Home Market. The message below it is sent from Mark Sanchin. Which one are you more likely to open?

Yep, the email from Mark. Unless you love shopping at Home Market, their email seems impersonal. You’re talking to an automation. And you expect they are just sending you a message to sell you a new product or send you more ads.

But Mark is a real person. He’s someone you could ask questions or respond to their message. He has a real voice.

This suggests one quick and easy way to boost your email open rates is to send your messages from a real person. If you’re a company, replace the company or department name (like “Accounting” or “Admin”) with a first and last name. You might pick the head of that department. Or, if you want to keep your business name, then state a first name before the company name. For example, Smartblogger sends their emails from “Kevin at Smartblogger”.

2. Make Your Subject Lines More Interesting

Subject lines are one of the most important sections people read before deciding to open an email. Even if a person doesn’t know the sender’s name yet, a compelling subject line may be enough to get a click. The key question then is: how can you write good subject lines to enhance email open rates?

First, you should try to invoke curiosity.

Humans are naturally curious, so if they see a dramatic or mysterious headline, then they gotta know more. Asking a question is a great way to pique people’s interest (How can you increase your subscriber list by 50% in just 24 hours?). But you could also present a surprising offer (Here’s a free present just for you!) or preview a shocking story (They told me she’d never walk again). Don’t hesitate to throw in a celebrity name or two (Write headlines like Lady Gaga).

Second, make your email personal by using your subscriber’s name in the subject line.

People are drawn to their own names. If they hear their name, they turn their heads to look even if they’re far from home or in a big crowd. Emails work the same way. People are 26% more likely to open the email if they see their name in the subject. (Campaign Monitor b)

You should also use numbers in your subject lines, if relevant. Like their names, people are hardwired to focus on numbers. They help quantify and measure the world around us. This means you should be specific about any offers or promises you’ll make in the email. For example, use phrases like “5 days left to get 50% off” or “The 7 super-simple ways to get more subscribers”.

The final tip is to use scarcity in your subject line to boost email open rates.

If a sale, bargain, or course opening is ending soon, tell people. People hate the idea they will miss out on a good deal.

3. Make Your Preview Text Catchy to increase email open rates

Give your readers a reason to open your emails by offering a sneak-peak at what they’ll get if they open your message. This means you should personalize the pre-header (or preview text) for every email you send. This is the short snippet you see to the right (or underneath) the subject line.

To increase email open rates, focus on the benefits subscribers can expect to gain. Will they learn something new that will revolutionize their business? Will they get an exclusive, amazing deal on a new product? People care more about the value than the information itself.

Here are a few great examples from real emails:

• Kaye Putnam: “[Free Training for You]”

• Donald Miller: “It’s your entire marketing plan in just a few pages.”

As you can see, you must write a short hook because most email systems only show 40-130 characters. Don’t be afraid to break grammatical rules in the pre-header. In fact, doing so will show your brand’s personality and help your business stand out.

4. Send Your Emails at a Different Time

If you’re like most people, you check your email as soon as you wake up each morning. But by 5 am, you’ve already received dozens of emails since last night. It’s quite easy for you to miss the emails you actually want as you scan and scroll through your phone.

But at certain times of the day, you’ll notice a new email immediately. You’re awake and the emails are trickling in slowly.

So one way to boost your email open rates is to schedule them for a time convenient for your subscribers. MailChimp and Active Campaign find people are most likely to open emails on a weekday compared to a weekend. (Hey! They need to relaxing too.) Specifically, people are more likely to open emails on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

And the best time of day to email your subscribers is 10 am (Mail Chimp 2021). But make sure you automate the emails so they send at 10 am in the time zone of your subscribers, not yourself.

5. Trim Down Your Subscribers List to increase email open rates

Ok, this next tip is a little painful. If you want to increase your email open rates, you need to cut your inactive subscribers.

That sounds crazy. You’ve spent months or years building a list of thousands of people – why would it be useful to delete subscribers?

Besides saving you money, shrinking your list actually helps you stay out of the spam folder. If your open and engagement rate is low, then email systems like Gmail and Hotmail will flag your messages as spam or block them. If your emails go straight to spam, then your active readers will never see or open them.

This doesn’t mean you should give up on your inactive subscribers. You might send them a re-engagement sequence to get them excited again. Or, you might send them a final notice that you’re about to break up with them.

But if they don’t open a single email after 6 months, it’s time to scrub these users. It’s gonna hurt a little, but it will be worth it. You’ll avoid the spam filter, and email subscribers who adore you will see and open your emails.

In Conclusion…

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to increase your email open rates. But these 5 tips are quick, super easy ways to improve your email open rates right now. Which will you implement first?

Are you stumped on how to start your email campaign? Do you need help getting an existing email newsletter to shine and boost email open rates? There is no need to go it alone. I serve several happy customers with my monthly done-for-you email subscription, taking the weight off their shoulders by designing and providing subject line and preheader suggestions to streamline their monthly newsletters. Several of my clients enjoy shockingly high email open rates (in the 50%-60% range!). To see how I can serve you, look at my monthly subscriptions, or click the button below.

Brodie, Ian. 2013. Email Persuasion: Captivate and Engage Your Audience, Build Authority and Generate More Sales With Email Marketing. Rainmaker Publishing.

Campaign Monitor a. 2020. “Email Marketing Benchmarks.” campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-benchmarks/

Campaign Monitor b. “The Power of Email Personalization to Reach Humans (Not Just Inboxes). campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/personalized-email/

Litmus. “The CMO’s Guide to Email Marketing.” litmus.com/resources/email-marketing-roi/

Mailchimp. “Master the Ways of Marketing.” mailchimp.com/resources/

Radicati. Email Statistics Report. April 2013.