Email Open Rates Abysmal? Five Ways to Get Readers to Click

Email subject line makes a big difference in whether readers click on your emails. But if you’ve tweaked them to perfection and your open rates are still not where they should be, there are a few other things you should be doing. Here are a few ways to boost your email open rates—regardless of the subject line.

Keep it quality—all the time. If your open rates used to be great and they’ve dropped off, take a look at what you’re sending them. Maybe your content quality has dropped off. If you deliver excellent content in each email, people will come to expect that from you—and they’ll be more likely to click on your emails. It’s important to continually keep tabs on your audience and understand what they’re concerned about, what questions they have, and what they want to read—these things can change over time.

Who is this coming from? Are you sending your emails from a specific person, or your company? Emails that are from companies generally get marked as advertising messages, which could result in your email being deleted, ignored, or shuffled into Spam. People are much more likely to open emails that come from someone they know. Be sure your “From” field has a human name and email address in it.

Pay attention to timing. Do your emails always go out at the same time? When you send them can have a big impact on whether or not they get read. Different studies say different things about the best time to send emails—and a lot of this depends on your industry, the work schedules and habits of your audience, the time zone you’re targeting, and other factors. It may take some experimentation to figure out which day and time—including weekends—works best.

Watch out for spam triggers. Spam filters tend to look out for emails that seem like they’re selling something. Keep words like “Sale,” “Buy,” “Free,” “Order,” “Refinance,” “Investment,” and even “Insurance” out of your subject line. Avoid spammy techniques like writing your subject line in all caps or starting your email with a salutation like “Dear __” or “Hello.” Keep the number of links in the email message down as well.

Target your email blasts. Are you sending out one general message to a range of demographics? If so, that might be your problem. Email marketing is far more effective when you segment your list. Break up your list into target markets—people interested in different types of insurance, or people with different income levels or locations, for instance—and develop targeted messages to appeal to each of these lists individually. Don’t expect each type of prospect to sort through a general message to get at the content that’s relevant to them.

If your email marketing isn’t working as well as it should, don’t write off email entirely. It’s possible that you’re not sending your messages at the right time; they’re not targeted enough; you’re getting sent into the Spam folder; or your quality has dropped off. With a few tweaks in these areas, you should see an improvement in your open rates.

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