Effective strategies to increase email open rate

How To Increase Email Open Rate

Email open rates are often used as indicators of a well-functioning email campaign. In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about email open rates. Specifically, what they are, why they’re important, email open rate statistics, as well as some simple strategies you can start today that will help increase your open rates. Some of the topics that we’ll delve deeper into include:

• What are email open rates?
• What is a good open rate for email?
• Industry-standard email open rates
• Strategies to increase open rates on emails
• Subject lines to improve open rate and click rate

What are email open rates & why open rates matter

Before we talk about specifics, it’s important to define exactly what an email open rate is. Email open rates are a percentage of the total number of people who have opened an email campaign. A lot of marketing teams look at email open rates to define how successful an email campaign is. Email open rates are an important statistic to look at when overviewing your email strategy. A good open rate can show you what you’re doing right and a low open rate can highlight an issue, whether it be a subject line, email content, etc.. Email open rates can better indicate what your marketing team needs to focus on or improve. So much of what we do for sales and marketing involves emailing and therefore open rates are a good statistic to look at when creating outreach campaigns. We all know how hard it is to capture the attention of our target audience so having a good open rate means that people are engaging with your content.

There are a couple of different statistics that marketers can analyze when it comes to email outreach, the most common ones are email open rate vs click rate. Email click-through rate is a statistic that highlights the percentage of people who have clicked on a link, an image, or a CTA within an email. Another common email metric is a response rate, or the percentage of people who respond to a particular email. There are a number of ways to improve average email response rate, click through rates, and open rates. All of these metrics are important to increase conversions, engagement, etc, but you can’t improve click-through rates and response rates unless your audience opens your email. In the next section, we’ll walk through common email metrics, statistics, industry standards, and what a good open rate for email is.

Email metrics and email statistics

You may be wondering, what’s a good open rate for email?Data shows that the average email open rates for all industries we analyzed are 22.33%. An industry average email open rate for computer and electronic industries is 19.29% while an average open rate for travel and transportation is 20.44%, therefore, your email metrics completely depend on the industry you’re working in. Average click-through rates also vary by industry. Other popular industry average open rate for email marketing includes:

Email open rates by industry:

• Education and training: 23.42%
• Insurance: 21.36%
• Marketing and advertising: 17.38%
• Medical, dental, and healthcare: 21.72%

How to increase email open rate

If your average email open rate is not where you want it to be, or not competitive with industry standards, then we’ve got a few simple strategies to help increase them. How to improve email marketing open rate is marketing subject that is well researched and doesn’t require too much expertise to apply to your own marketing efforts. Below, we’ll show you how to increase open rate of emails. To increase email open rates, you can look into:

• Subject lines – The subject line of an email is a major influence on whether or not a person will open your email. It’s important to put a significant amount of thought and testing into your email subject lines to find out what works best for you and what appeals the most to your audience. We will discuss best practices and effect subject lines and delve into this subejct with more detail below.

• Video email – Including a video in your emails has an overall positive impact on email metrics. Video email marketing statistics show that videos drastically improve click through rates, just by including the word “video” in the subject line can improve open rates by 19%.

• Send from a contact – Unless you’re a big well known brand, sending an email from a specific contact instead of a company can help improve your open rates. Using a contact can help your email avoid the spam box and can add a personal touch to your outreach. Viewers prefer personalization so much that they’re more likely to open an email from an actual person rather than a generic company email.

Email subject line best practices

We’ve compiled a list of best practices to increase open rates on emails. You can either combine some of these practices or use them alone. It may event take some experimentation and time to figure out wha works best for your brand and your audience.

• Avoid spam – Make sure to avoid using certain words to keep your emails from being flagged as spam, some of these words include: ‘free’ or ‘cash’. Other email styles that are typically flagged as spam can include lots of colored text, all caps, excessive exclamation points, and too many images.

• Video in subject line – Just by adding the word video to the subject line, you can increase an average email open rate by 19%. Try to put video towards the beginning of the subject to grab the attention of your audience.

• Add personalization – You can add personalization to your email by addressing your recipient by first name makes them feel valued, or, orient the subject line around an individual date, like a birthday or a company’s anniversary.

• Subject line length – Best subject line practices include keeping this title short and sweet, under 50 characters to be exact. For even better results, add personalization, the word video, a sense or urgency, or an incentive.

• A/B test with emojis – Emojis help you stand out in the inbox, but not all instances guarantee success. We recommend using your best judgement, or run A/B testing to see what works best for your industry.

• Compatible with mobile – Nearly 75% of Americans check their email primarily on a smartphone. Therefore, always test your emails to reassure they are mobile-friendly.

Catchy email subject lines to increase open rates

Whether you’re looking for some professional email subject line examples or the best email subject liens for sales, we’ve got you covered. We’ve listed our favorite professional subject line examples below:

Simple Email Subject Lines:

• [Video] Why Covideo? I’ll tell you in 30 seconds
• A Video For Jill
• Brian: A Video For You!

Personalized Email Subject Lines:

• I’m also from _____!
• Emma N. referred you to me! Let’s chat ?
• Best camping spots in _____

Unique Email Subject Lines:

• I’m going to be honest with [Company Name]…
• Are you struggling with (name the pain point)? Here are 3 solutions.
• You deserve the best (here’s what it looks like)

Boost average open rate today

In this article, we’ve covered ways to have a good email open rate, what’s a good email open rate, and listed examples of our favorite go-to subject lines. Combining all of the different methods listed above can help you increase your email marketing open rate. We mentioned that the average email campaign open rate was 22.33%, which you can set as a goal for your email campaign or you can tweak that number based on your brand’s industry. We mentioned that opening your email is just the first step, but the content inside the email is truly what’s going to drive action.

Video is the best way to increase open rates and click through rates. Sending a video email is a great way to increase both of those email metrics. When a recipient clicks on and opens your email, they’ll be greeted with a moving, video thumbnail with your face front and center. This captures their attention and entices them to click on and watch your video, increasing the chances they hear and respond to your email.

Start today and increase email open rates, click-through rates, and response rates with video. Try personalized video.  Start a free trial, no credit card required.