How to Increase Email Open Rates

Email open rates tell you how many people actually open your emails. They let you measure the success of your email campaigns and understand what’s working and what needs adjusting. 

We’ll explore the importance of email open rates and offer some top tips to increase customer engagement and drive success. 

Open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates

The ultimate goal of email marketing is to encourage customers to take action and interact with your business. This could mean visiting your website’s blog, checking out new products or services, sending an enquiry or making a purchase. 

Monitoring email performance involves key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. 

• Open rates refer to the percentage of recipients who opened the email. 

• Click-through rates track the number of people who clicked on a link.

• Conversion rates measure the number of clicks that produced the desired campaign effect, i.e., a purchase. 

Why is it important to track open rates? 

Although getting subscribers to open your email seems like a simple task, upping your email open rate is the first step toward successfully executing your email strategy. More email opens mean more click-throughs, leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue. 

Tracking open rates is important because if recipients aren’t opening your emails when they arrive in their inbox, it indicates that there are some quick fixes to try before considering changes to content, structure, or visuals. 

Factors affecting email open rates

Here are some factors that affect email open rates. 

• Subject line
• Preheader
• Name and email address
• Recipient’s name and email address
• Timing 
• Frequency

5 Strategies to increase email open rates

There are various strategies you can use to increase your email open rates. We’ve broken down our top five below: 

1. A/B test subject lines

Make sure your subject lines are short and sweet (30-50 characters) to engage your audience. Align your subject line with your brand’s tone and offer value, like announcements or time-sensitive deals, without resorting to clickbait. 

A/B testing allows you to experiment to see what works best for your audience. This tactic involves sending an email with one subject line to half your audience and another with a different subject line to the rest. You can then see which email has the higher open rate and use this to inform future subject lines. 

2. Segment email lists

Not every marketing email has to go to your entire subscriber list. Instead, you can categorise your audience based on demographics, past behaviours, or likely actions. This allows you to send more targeted emails and increase open rates.

For example, you could divide your subscriber list based on location, past purchase behaviour, engagement, interests or how far along they are in their buyer journey. 

3. Personalise subject line

A simple way to increase open rates is to personalise your subject lines and pique the interest of your email recipients. Most email marketing platforms let you add dynamic tags to your emails to display information about the recipient automatically. 

This information could include first names, recent purchases, or upcoming events they’ve signed up for. Subject line personalisation is a quick and easy way to boost the chances of your email marketing emails being opened. 

4. Consider ‘To’ and ‘From’ email addresses

For clarity and consistency, make sure your company name appears as the sender name. This helps subscribers recognise your emails and reduces the risk of them being marked as junk. 

It’s also worth using an email verification tool to validate email addresses before sending them to minimise your bounce rate. 

5. Understand when and how often to send emails

If you have existing data from previous email campaigns, look at what worked best to determine the optimal sending frequency. For example, if you sent five emails in January and by the third email, you saw a drop-off in open rates or an increase in unsubscribe rates, aim for two to three emails per month as a maximum. 

If you’re starting your first campaign, experimentation is critical to finding the right sending frequency and timing. Typically, weekdays between 9am and 3pm work best, but there’s no exact science, so it’s worth playing around with it and trying A/B testing to find the best approach for your business. 

Elevate your email marketing game

Increasing email open rates requires continuous tracking, testing, and readjusting. Higher open rates often lead to increased click-through and conversion rates, so it’s crucial to fine-tune your email marketing strategy to maximise audience engagement. 

At Puddle, we specialise in helping you connect with the people who matter most. Whether it’s through regular newsletters, company updates, or personalised messages, we’re here to help with all your email marketing needs. By optimising open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates, we can help you expand your reach, build brand loyalty, and drive sales. 

What are you waiting for? Get in touch today!