Marketing automation is a powerful way to keep in touch with your prospects and customers, especially via email.
But the question is, how do you go about it without pushing the wrong button that would lead to unsubscribes?
How many emails do you think your prospects and customers receive daily? 10? 20? 50? More.
According to the Radicati group, an average of 196.3 billion emails were sent and received daily in 2014 and that number is expected to rise to 227.7 billion in 2018.
Now to answer the question. An average worker received, in 2014, 85 business emails and sent 36 of their own. In 2018, they’re set to receive 97 emails and send 43 of their own.
The bitter truth is that they can only read a few of these emails and take action on even fewer. There are many brands also trying to grab your prospect’s attention. You need to make your emails worth an open for your subscribers.
Making your emails worthwhile for subscribers would mean that you’ll be able to get your message across, bring them to click on your links and hopefully get them to purchase your product.
Remember, though, that if they don’t open your emails, there is no chance of any of this happening.
In this in-depth article, I’ll share proven tips that your brand can follow to stand out in your prospect’s and customer’s inbox — and what you can do to guarantee that your emails are not only opened, but the embedded links in the content are clicked as well.
Open Rate Vs. Click-Rate: What’s the difference?
First of all, open rate depends on the number of emails delivered to your recipients. For instance, if you send an email to 1,000 subscribers and your email is delivered to 960, your open rate will be calculated based on 960 because those who didn’t get it can’t open it.
You can use this formula:
If 500 subscribers open your email, your open rate is 52.08%. Average open rate depends on many factors and one of them is your industry. In MailChimp’s Benchmark Report, Open Rate varied from 15.22% for daily deals to 28.46% for hobbies.
Click Rate is the percentage of users who click on those that read your email. Let’s say you get 30 people to click your post, out of the 500 who opened it, that’s a click-rate of 6%.
This also varies based on your industry. It could be as low as 1.25% for restaurants and as high as 5.13% for hobbies.
How to send branded emails to increase open and click-rate?
Follow these tips to increase open and click-rate of your emails.
1. Build high-quality emails from day one
No one builds a good reputation in a day. Likewise, no one starts building a good reputation by being negative. Every email you send is an opportunity to provide value. It’s an opportunity to impress and solve your recipient’s problem.
When you offer quality consistently from your first email, subscribers associate your brand with quality. This improves your open rate because receivers know your email will be worthwhile.
In a survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey, 56% of respondents say they unsubscribe from an email list when the content is no longer relevant or wasn’t what they expected.
Valuable emails are important to both your open rate and click rate. When readers get value from your emails, they’ll be more open to click-through to your call to action.
They’ll also open your emails in the future, or even look forward to it. You can link to ebooks, webinars, podcasts, or in-depth blog posts that explain the concept you’re talking about.
2. Test email delivery times
Are there times when your subscribers will likely overlook your emails? Yes. For instance, sending emails during the weekend when most people are off work is a bad idea. Or so it seems.
Also, sending in the evening may not be ideal. This is because by the next morning when people get to work, they have to deal with about 77 messages when they have time to only check 5.
And they already have 10 from the Boss and coworkers. So no chance. Research by MailChimp shows that subscribers are more likely to open your emails after 10 am.
It also found that 23% of email opens occur during the first hour after delivery. It’s a better strategy to send your emails after your subscribers have cleared their inboxes in the morning.
GetResponse also found that the best days for email open rates are Tuesdays and Fridays with 19.9% and 19.6% open rates respectively.
These may vary based on your industry or the country you’re sending to. Test different delivery times and analyze your results based on the open rate and click-through rate — more so, based on how long a recipient spent reading your email.
3. Send the right email to an email segment
Consider this situation: A subscriber has just bought your product for a discount. Then the next day, they get an email about a discount offer for the same product.
This is annoying at best and shows your business is sloppy.
This is where the matter of email segments come in. Do you have specific list segment for fresh leads? What of qualified leads? Or new customers? Even repeat customers?
There are many ways you can segment your list depending on the business you’re doing. Sending blast emails today is the best way to beat your email open rate down.
You have to send different emails to different lists. You can add tags based on subscribers’ behavior, their demographics and how they interact with your brand.
According to a survey by Lyris, 39% of marketers who sent email to segmented lists had higher open rates, 28% had a lower opt-out rate, and 24% had better deliverability and increased revenue.
When your subscribers know you for this, they can click on your emails rest assured that you’re not about to waste their time.
Steven MacDonald conducted an experiment to see the effects of segmentation. He sent an email to a segmented list that identifies with the message and to a general list. He got a 40% open rate for the general list and 94.20% open rate and 30.43% click rate for the segmented list.
4. Resend unopened emails to boost open rate and click-rate
In some cases, due to the number of emails people receive, they may miss your email unintentionally. That’s why you should resend to such subscribers. For the second message, you can try another subject line for your email.
Mailigen sent an email to its subscribers. The email got a 20.5% open rate.
Then they changed the subject line and resent it to those who failed to open the initial email. This raised their open rate to 29%.
5. Take one approach with your subject line
Your subject line is probably the most important part of your email when you consider open rate. The subject line and a few words are what recipients see first. A captivating line will attract your subscriber to click your email.
According to a survey by Litmus-Fluent, 34% of respondents will open their emails based on the subject line. Convince and Convert also reports that 69% of recipients will brand an email spam based on the headline alone.
When writing your subject line, you must write for your subscribers. What benefits will they gain from your email?
They have to have an idea before they click. If possible, include a number in your subject line as this attracts people. Also, engage their curiosity with what would interest them.
A report by Retention Science shows that subject lines with 6 to 10 words have the highest open rates. Mobile targeting is the right approach these days. Therefore, try to shorten your subject line as many users are now checking their emails on their mobile phones. They’ll only see part of your headline.
6. Optimize the email for conversions
To get the best click rate possible, you have to optimize your email to convert readers. Here are some of the effective ways you can do this:
- Use short sentences and paragraphs. This helps readers to read or skim through your email easily. Let your language be clear enough for readers to understand.
- Use a single call to action: Giving readers too many options will discourage them. By using a single call to action, Whirlpool increased click-through rate by 42%.
- Use fewer images: Too many images can hurt your click-through rate. According to HubSpot, 64% of people prefer rich text emails — and click-through rate tends to decrease as the number of images in an email increases.
- Optimize for mobile: Let your email be mobile-responsive as most recipients are viewing from their mobile devices. EmailMonday reports that mobile email will account for 22 to 77% of your email opens depending on your industry and target audience.
7. Personalization: Experiment with addressing leads by name
Even though you’re sending a message to many subscribers, you want each of them to think you’re talking to them alone. ‘Hi Richard’ is always better than ‘Hi there.’
The study by Retention Science also shows that there’s an increase in open rates when the recipient’s name is in the subject line.
According to a survey of marketers by VentureBeat, they found that more personalization improves their open rate and click-through rate.
But only to a point. So you should not over-personalize your emails as it may backfire.
By using dog data from their CRM system, Doggyloot sent personalized emails to dog owners and increased click-through rate by 750%.
Conclusion
Sending branded emails requires paying attention to your subscribers. What do they need? What provides value for them?
When your emails are crafted to take care of subscriber’s interests, you’ll increase your chances of getting a higher open rate and click rate.
Follow these tips today and satisfy your subscribers. This will lead to more engagement and trust and positions your brand for success.