Let me ask you a million dollar question – does email marketing really work? There’s a ton of data from reputed organizations which show fancy bar graphs on how email marketing such a significant channel for acquisition as well as retention.

To answer it in short, it works – provided you have your own email database, your nurtured audience that you speak to once in a while and you add value to their life by giving them information that they seek.

Now that many brands use bulk emailing tools like Sendy, Sendinblue, etc., one common issue that props up is – LOW OPEN RATES!

Firstly, what is an open rate for an email campaign? Open rate is the percentage of people who opened your email out of the total number of people who received it.

Let’s dig deeper on what could be the probable reasons for low open rates:

1. Poor or spammy subject line
2. Not so great preheader text
3. Email lands in the promotions tab OR email content perceived as promotional by email clients like Gmail

Quick email marketing tips to improve open rates like a champ!

1. Poor or spammy subject line

Don’t sell on the subject line, do that inside the email. That too minimally.

I have seen so many brands who go out and talk LOUDLY (in caps) about their sale, their offer, their collection and what not, right there in the subject line. That’s the easiest way Gmail classifies your email as a promotional email. Moreover, it’s not exciting for your end users as it used to be 5 years back. Every other email they receive is like the offer they shouldn’t miss, and your audience can very well start ignoring such lines. Rather, use inquisitiveness in your email. Add some blog content inside the mailer and entice users to open the mail to read that content! That’s just a smarter way to get your mailers opened, and then, of course, introduce the lead to your offer. So, here are some pro email marketing tips:

• Build inquisitive value in your subject line with a WH question and have some interesting content inside the email
• A/B test with multiple subject lines, don’t just stick to one
• Use MailChimp’s subject line researcher
• Trying personalized subject lines
• Use emoji in subject lines, instead of words
• Seriously avoid usage of spammy terms like “Last chance”, “Preapproved”, “No fees”, etc. Here’s a laundry list of all such terms which trigger spam.

Here’s a good resource to learn more on how to write great subject lines.

2. Preheader text

One of the most widely kept secrets in email marketing is the right usage of the preheader text. This text appears beneath the subject line in your email client and is another reason which can influence the user to open your email.

Here’s how it looks: 

Use this space smartly to give a sneak-peek or a teaser of what users can expect inside the email.

3. Emails land in the promotions tab

This is one of the major factors that can kill your email marketing strategy. Undoubtedly, a large number of your users, never go to the promotions tab, to invite massive on the face advertising and be overwhelmed for nothing. This needs to be addressed the quickest in your email marketing strategy.

The email content is really what triggers if the email should land in the promotions tab. The IP where you send the email from triggers if the email should land in the spam tab.

What email clients prefer to show in primary is the kind of email that looks like it’s sent by a friend. It doesn’t have way too many images or a large volume of HTML code. It’s majorly text heavy with a signature at the bottom, isn’t that like the emails you usually receive in your primary inbox?

You might like: 4 Simple Ways to Boost your E-commerce Sales

Pro email marketing tips to stay away from the promotions tab:

1. Personalize your email by using merged tags
2. Regularly ask users to add us to address book. Host instructions on our own site. Or add a screenshot of the process in GIF
3. Get users to reply to your email
4. Build engagement as scrolls & click
5. Ask users to move this email to the inbox
6. Avoid having more than 2 links inside your email (including unsubscribing link)
7. Send plain text emails instead of graphic emails
8. Don’t be promotional in the content, have a conversational tone
9. Email sent from a user ID like [email protected] instead of [email protected]
10. Avoid the common promotional layout – too many images, social links, too much HTML
11. Don’t include the X-Mailer header; Don’t include the X-Campaign / X-Campaignid header
12. Reduce footer text, keep a simple signature if possible
13. Don’t use pushy CTAs, “buy now”, instead “learn more”, “check out”, “I want this!”, “give me info”, etc.

So, there you go, quick email marketing tips, easy ones to help you get started and yield better open rates. Here are some bonus email marketing tips which will probably help you much more and put you in the right direction in your pursuit for better open rates.

Bonus Points:

1. Also, I recommend you keep in mind the day & time of your campaign. Open Google Analytics and check when your traffic is most active on your website. That could probably be a good time to send out your mailers.

2. Use this fantastic tool called GLock apps, which helps you understand exactly where your email lands in most popular email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. It also gives you suggestions to improve open rates

3. You can also sign up with Google Post Master for more information about your domain and it’s deliverability.

That’s all folks!

Do reach out to me on [email protected] or drop a comment below in case you have some suggestions/comments/opinions.

Also read: Online Reputation Management with Case Study