HOW TO INCREASE YOUR OPEN RATES:
3 Reasons Why No One is Opening Your Emails
One of the things I help my clients with email marketing and how to increase their open rates.
Email marketing is just a fancy pants way of saying: ‘sending emails to potential customers to try and get them to like you, trust you and buy from you.’ And ‘open rate’ is a term that indicates the percentage of people that opened a specific email you sent.
That’s it!
Anyways, back to the subject of helping you with your emails. Two things we want people to do with our emails:
- OPEN THEM
~this means that your subject line worked and they want to find out what your email is about 👍
~Aim for an open rate of 25% or higher (more on how to increase your open rate below)
- CLICK SOMETHING
~this means that you have piqued their interest, so much so, they want more and they have CLICKED a button within your email to get it! 🎉
~We like 2.5%+ click rates
BUT ….
Too often, we work really hard on our emails and then no one opens and/or clicks them 😢 . And I’m here to give you THREE REASONS WHY YOUR EMAILS ARE FAILING … and some tips on how to increase your open rates and get more eyes 👀 on your emails!
1) You Don’t Know Why You’re Sending Your Email
Every time you send an email I want you to think about WHY you are sending it?
What is the goal of the email and what do you want people to do after reading it?
Are you trying to drive traffic to your website?
Then you need a button linked to your website that they can click on with a prompt of why they should.
Do you want to sell x amount of a certain product?
Then you should be featuring that one specific product, hyping it up and giving them a ‘BUY NOW’ button and a special deal if they do it today!
Do you want them to get to know and trust you?
Then you should be sharing a bit about you, your story, ask them a question and prompt them to reply to you.
2) Your Subject Stinks
There are a few companies that I periodically get emails from that honest to goodness have subject lines that read: Customer Email #1 or Spring Newsletter.
Talk about sexy and enticing, right?
NOT!
I want you to pay attention to the emails that you choose to open and the ones you choose to delete … is there a pattern?
Try a few different types of subject lines:
- ask a question
- say something funny
- tell them what they get
- entice with a coupon
- say something random and quirky
Pay attention to your stats and see if certain subject lines are more popular. Getting clear on what type of subject lines your audience responds well to will definitely increase your open rates 👏 )
But please, whatever you do, don’t use the same subject line over and over and DO NOT use ‘spring newsletter’ … unless you want no one to open your message!
HINT: Some studies show that by including an emoji in your subject line, open rates increase. Why not give this a try?! It might just help to improve your open rates!
3) You Include Way Too Many Choices In Your Email
This ties back into #1 and what our goal is. An email likely won’t succeed if you have one goal, and then talk about 5 different things and ask your reader to do 8 other actions.
I see this a lot with businesses that offer services and products. Their emails have the best of intentions, but they start off by saying:
- ‘Hey, it’s Mother’s Day, time to book your xyz’ and provide a button.
- Then you scroll down a bit and they are telling you about a special deal they are offering with a button.
- Then right below that they have a collage of products that are 20% off and a button to buy
And by this time the reader has so many options swirling in their head, instead of choosing one, their brain will subconsciously decide that this is WAY too much work and WAY too confusing and they will click away without doing anything.
If you send a multi-subject newsletter once a month, that is totally fine, but including numerous topics and items in every email you send is a NO-GO for me.
Do yourself a favour, try including just ONE feature/button/call-to-action in your next few emails and see what happens. Observe if you increase your open rates or click rates.
I hope these three easy tips are easy to implement and something that you can experiment with this month. I’m almost positive you’ll see an increase in your open and click rates instantly. Let me know how it goes!
If you want more help with your email marketing and additional tips to help you succeed click here for more articles.
If you want to join my email list, click HERE.
And lastly, if you want to know more about the email platform/program that I use, check it out HERE (it’s called FLODESK).
From my kitchen table to yours,
Kitchen Table CEOs is a boutique agency specializing in online marketing for solopreneurs and small businesses. Owner Tracy Smith helps you create the content, brand, and online presence you need to launch and grow your business with confidence and ease. Kitchen Table CEOs can design and develop your website, create your business story, write all of your content, and launch your email marketing. For more information on services, please CLICK HERE.
