Today’s competitive and fast-paced market demands every email to be opened by the customer. The emails getting delivered to the recipient’s inbox has to grab his attention, even if his mailbox gets crowded with too many other emails.
As most of the recipients nowadays are busy with their Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites it has become increasingly difficult to hold their dwindling attention. Marketers have to plan accordingly for laying out the marketing strategy which will motivate the recipients to open their emails.
Some of the best tips to optimize the email open rates are:
- Displaying Offer in The Subject Line: Email open rates work best when the offers are highlighted in the subject lines. Almost all the customers get motivated by offers, as it provides a good discount which they never thought of. So, you should highlight these offers by putting customers in a favorable position.
- Delivering The Value To The Reader: The purpose of the email should not be only getting delivered to the recipient’s inbox but providing value to the reader. Every email sent, has to be informative with a catchy headline so that after opening the email the reader should not find it annoying or not matching with the information provided in the subject line. Most of the readers get turned off when they find body content differing from the email subject line. With each mail, it has to be seenthat the message provides value to the reader.
- Creating A Great First-Hand Impression:You must have heard that the first impression is the last impression. In the marketing world, even many brands have a good relationship with their customer because of their first impression. It helps in developing the trust factor within the customers. With increased competition in the market, customers now have a lotof options to choose from, and a first-hand impression goes a long way in holding these customers to your brand.
- An Urgency For Your Brand: Infusing an urgency like “you would surely not like to miss this opportunity,” “grab the best-limited offer,” “Never before an opportunity for our users” goes a long way in pulling the right customers with increased email open rates and conversions.
- Summarized Email: Sometimes marketers provide a detailed content of their services or product which becomes boring for the recipient. Itcan be improvised, by crafting a summarized email with all the essential details in points, and compelling subject line prompting the recipient to take action.
- Avoid sing too much highlighted words with caps or punctuation marks in the subject line: Too much usage of punctuation marks or exclamatory marks triggers the spam filters of the recipients, further reducing the open rates. It is also advisable not to use “Fwd” or “Re” in the subject lines for getting faster open rates.
- Think Out of the Box: You might have heard this sentence very often in recent times. We all love experimenting with new things, so is the case with the recipients. When they see email having something unique to offer, or interesting to read they instantly open the email. You have to think creatively and design email for arising curiosity among them. Innovative emails always have a good open rate.
- Watching the Character Limit: An optimized email has to match the character limit. Too much lengthy mail can ward off the readers as they think it as time-consuming and irrelevant to read. A well-planned strategy can work out in limiting the characters within an optimized range. The subject lines with around 61-70 characters are found to be one of the effective ones.
The next important thing to consider,if most of your subscribers are available on mobile phones, then it is better to create shorter subject lines. All these seem to be very small but relevant details while designing an email for better email open rates.
- Testing & Improving: It’s always better to test and work on the email subject lines. The lines which worked for a specific brand and industry might not work for the other. Monitoring and iterating based on the results is the perfect way to develop the perfect subject line for the target customer.
Conclusion: Emails help in connecting with the right customer at the right time. Most of the recipients get bombarded with an innumerable number of emails, giving enough scope for distraction. So, as a marketing manager, you have to apply the accurate strategies for diverting their attention towards your mail. This as explained above, can help in optimizing the email open rates to a great extent.
