Having an open rate of three percent or higher is considered excellent. Anything below two percent and you’re basically considered failing. The traditional methods of measuring email marketing success include collecting and analyzing open and click rates.
While it’s true that the majority of your email recipients won’t buy your product, it’s also true that a small portion of your subscribers will actually go on to become your buyers. So the question is: How do I get my open rate to shoot up?
The Goal Is To Have ‘Hard Wins’ & ‘Wins To Scale’
When you’ve been working hard to grow your email list and to gain credibility as a thought leader in your industry, it can feel like a major letdown to get a response rate below two percent. But the truth is that you’re not going to grow your list significantly unless you see some real growth in your open rate. To put it simply, you’re not going to move the needle unless you see some results.
To have ‘hard wins’ and ‘wins to scale’, you need to do a few things. First, you need to determine what your ideal open rate should be. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to email marketing because each industry and each company is going to have a different ideal. Your email marketing strategy will then be built around boosting your open rate to that level.
The other thing you need to do is to make sure that your open rate is not a one-off event. If you see that your open rate suddenly went up by one or two percent after you sent out a mass email, that would be great. But if your open rate stays below what you’re aiming for while you continue to send out emails, you’re going to see low engagement and therefore poor results.
Watch Out For Autoresponders
It’s important to monitor your open rate directly in your email marketing software because there are a lot of programs that will automatically send out a follow-up email after someone opens your original message. This is called an ‘autoresponder’ and it can have a significant impact on your open rate. Especially if you have a lot of new signups or if you’re sending out a lot of promotional emails.
When you’re setting up your autoresponder, you need to make sure that you’ve got a compelling reason for the person that opened your email to read more. If you’re not asking them to take some sort of action or to subscribe to your list, then you’re essentially just throwing out content to see if they’ll bite. The truth is that not everyone wants to be bothered with emails from brands they don’t know or trust. So if you want to see your open rate increase, make sure that your autoresponder is set up to provide value to your subscribers.
Avoid ‘Buyer’s Remorse’
Another factor that hinders your open rate is called ‘buyer’s remorse’. If someone finds out about a product they were planning on buying, but forgot to cancel their order, that person will blame themselves for the failure to close the deal. So if you’re sending out emails to promote a product, and the person reads the email and decides not to buy the product after all, you’re going to see a significant drop in your open rate because they’ll feel deceived and upset about being so close to securing a sale, but then having the rug pulled out from under them. This phenomenon is called ‘buyer’s remorse’.
To prevent buyer’s remorse from torpedoing your conversions, you need to make sure that your emails are not misleading in any way. There are a few things that you can do to ensure that your messages are clear and that you’re not causing any unwanted anxiety or disappointment. Make sure that you have a plain and easy to follow path to the end-goal of the email campaign. People hate feeling like they’re not following a clear direction, and when you do that, they tend to be more receptive to your message. One way to make sure that you’re not misleading anyone is to put a clear call-to-action (CTA) in your email’s subject line. For example, rather than “Your Daily Digest of Important News,” you can say “Sign up for our Awesome Weekly Newsletter to get important news and information about X, Y, or Z today.” You’ll likely see a significant increase in your open rate when you use a CTA in your headlines. In addition, you can also put a face to your email’s subject line by using a person’s name. It’s a quick, easy, and effective way to get more open rates without any deceptive subject line tricks. So don’t be afraid to put yourself in your emails if you want to see improvements.
The Importance Of Retinics
If you’re sending email marketing messages that are relevant and helpful to your subscribers, you’re going to see a rise in your open rate over time. The truth is that your subscribers aren’t stupid. They know when they’re being pitched to, and when it comes down to it, they’ll usually pick up on the cues that you’re not being authentic. To counter that, you need to use tactics that will make your subscribers think that you’re a real person, rather than just another marketing brand. The best way to do that is with retinics.
A retinics is a type of content that will make people curious enough to click on your message, but not so much that they’ll feel the need to engage with you. When you use retinics, you’re basically telling your subscribers “I see you, but I’m not really interested in talking to you. Go bother someone else.”
While it’s tempting to go all-in on retinics and hide relevant content behind them, it’s important to remember that they’re just a tool. Like everything else in digital marketing, you need to make sure that you’re using them in conjunction with other tactics. Make sure that you’re including keywords in your headlines and in your description. In addition, you can use various platforms (i.e. LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc) to drive more traffic to your website and boost your conversions. And don’t forget about your email marketing software – make sure that you’re keeping track of every open and click through to your website.
One thing to keep in mind when using retinics is that not everyone will respond the same way. To truly understand what your retinics are doing for your open rate, you need to look at your engagement metrics.
Make Sure You Follow Up
To have ‘hard wins’ and ‘wins to scale’, you need to make sure that you’re following up with your leads. Ideally, you want to see a steady stream of traffic to your site, and to get that, you need to be sending out follow-up emails. Even if you’re getting a good response from your initial email effort, you need to make sure that you’re closing the loop and prompting people to make a purchase. The best way to do that is by sending out follow-ups.
To follow up with your leads, you need to be putting yourself in their shoes for a moment. What would you need to do to get motivated to act? To make a purchase? To get the most from your email marketing, you need to be thinking of what would make your subscribers click through to your site with abandon.
To sum it up, if you want to make sure that you have ‘hard wins’ and ‘wins to scale’, you need to do the following: