Steal These Tips to Up Your Email Open Rate

Are you feeling discouraged about a low open rate on your latest marketing email blast? Not to worry. Here are a handful of savvy tips that will increase your email open rate instantly. The Get Smart Group works primarily in the backyard recreation industry with clients who own brick and mortar stores and have a substantial client base to engage. If you haven’t invested in a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) that suits your needs, feel free to reach out to us for suggestions based on your unique situation. This blog post assumes you have a CRM and are interested in further optimizing its use.

Keep Your Subscriber List Updated

The first tip to improving your open rate is to remove old subscribers periodically. When you have an inactive subscriber who has not engaged with any email in the past 12 months, then you can do one of two things. Send them a “Hail Mary” email to re-engage them or just delete them from your list. All joking aside, the Hail Mary email is an email you send out to folks one last time to see if they are still interested in your products or services. You can be bold in your subject line if you like, something along the lines of “Is it over?” “It’s not you; it’s me,” and so on.

What the Heck are Segments and Tags

Segments or Tags are applied to contacts when you first input them into your CRM. Tagging helps send relevant emails to the right consumers. You can tag based on behaviors like purchases or where the lead came from.

For example, a lead from a Facebook form was filled out for a patio sale. As you input them into your CRM, tag them as a patio lead. In the future, when you have a patio-specific email to send, you can make sure it only goes to the folks who are interested in buying a new patio set. This email will go to a smaller list of potential buyers, but will perform better than a bulk email on a specific product like fire pits that gets sent out to your entire contact list. Plus, you are not annoying your patio customers with superfluous emails about products in which they have little to no interest.

Sidestep Spam Filters

Spam filters are so much more sophisticated nowadays. They can be highly sensitive to certain words or punctuation, too. Spam emails are bulk emails sent to the masses with little to no personalization. Use the “merge tags” feature when composing your emails. You will be able to personalize the “To:” field of your email with each customer’s name. Another way to avoid the spam filters is not to use all caps when writing. Avoid overusing sales words like “buy”, “clearance”, “discount”, or “cash”. Lastly, always use a signature in your email and include your physical address (when possible) or website URL. 

Timing, Timing, Timing

Ready to hit Send? Let’s hold off a second before you do. When will your patio customer open and read this email? It might seem impossible to predict, but you can put a bit of thought into it by imagining your patio customer’s day. Think about when you typically hear back from your customers. Does your typical customer ring you up first thing in the morning? On their lunch break? Maybe they’re after-hours and weekenders. Send emails when they’re most likely to be thinking about and engaging with your content.

Here’s another tip. A lot of research has been done on the optimal time for sending an email, and the consensus is (very generalized) but a safe bet: 10 am on a weekday in the consumer’s time zone. So if your customers’ schedules seem all over the place, 10 am their time is a good stab at it. 

Lastly, if your CRM is sophisticated enough to keep tabs on when your contact typically opens an email from you, then it is an option to have your CRM send the email within the next 24 hours at the most optimal time. 

The Magic is in the Subject Line

The subject line needs to be well thought out, conversational, and relevant to your consumer. There are a few ways to capture your recipient’s attention. Try using a question in your subject line to make a more personal connection. A teaser subject line works well for piquing curiosity. Whatever your subject line is, make it unique. Gone are the days of “August Newsletter from Smith Pools!”. Boring! Speak to the solution your products or services provide. “Mother-in-law visiting for Easter? Take 20% Off Patio” can work for motivating a buy to update their patio furniture. 

We hope this post will help you turn dipping open rates around and connect with your contacts with relevant content that leads to sales.