How To Get 50%+ Open Rates [With Proof]

Before jumping into some of the techniques I use to get consistent 50%+ Open Rates, a few quick points:

1. REPUTATION

The best way to GET and KEEP consistently high Open Rates is by having a great reputation with your list i.e. it's your name (the Sender's Name) that is probably the biggest factor in getting your emails opened, not deceptive trickery with Subject Lines.

Trying to trick or deceive your email subscribers may work once or twice but is toxic to the health of your relationship with your list.

And relationship-BUILDING is one of the main objectives of email marketing.

2. MY APPROACH

There are many different philosophies in email marketing and online business generally and this post just covers what works for me.

3. DON'T OBSESS OVER OPEN RATES ON THEIR OWN

While a high Open Rate is very important, if the click-Through Rate (CTR) on the main link in your email message sucks, then a high Open Rate is pointless (more on that below when I get to split-testing).

In short, look closely at your Open Rate + CTR + Landing Page Metrics to assess what's working and what isn't (obviously your traffic sources need to be monitored too!).

One of the great aspects of email marketing is that you will usually see your results (good or bad) within 24 hours and can then act on that information.

Think of your email marketing action as a live 24/7 test lab where you can constantly test and track new ideas or angles.

4. OPEN RATE AVERAGES?

Open Rates across companies, email marketers and industries can vary widely but Mailchimp's research suggests a 20-something % average across its users.

Ryan Deiss reportedly works on under 10% but he's working with massive lists and Open Rates do go down as list sizes increase.

I've had by far the best success with highly targeted lists of under 100 people selling higher ticket recurring services (so forget all about list size as everything - you want to build 'repeat buyer' lists of any size).

5. FIGHTING DISTRACTION

People online are more distracted than they have ever been - this study published on Time.com suggests that around half of new visitors to a new webpage spend less than 15 seconds there.

Hence, email marketing and retargeting is essential to reach them again, at least a percentage of them.

So not only do your landing pages need to undergo serious testing before you invest time or money in driving serious traffic, but that kind of thinking needs to be applied to your email marketing.

Online, everyone is distracted, information-overloaded and restless to keep moving on.

So back to the specific approaches you can use to achieve 50% Open Rates, especially in combination with each other.

In the below examples, I'm showing examples mainly from AWeber, which is far from perfect, but I haven't quite yet reached the point of giving up completely on them as my main email management service (it's probably coming soon though):

Technique #1:

Whenever I'm sending an important one-off broadcast email OR looking to add a message to an autoresponder followup sequence, I will use a smaller sub-list from the same website in the same niche to split-test 4 (the maximum allowed in AWeber) different subject lines.

Typically this sub-list will have 500-1000 subscribers and NOT be the main list.

I'll get to why I use sub-lists in a minute.

Look at the difference here in the results from different sub-list split-tests - especially in slightly lower Open Rates but higher CTR (all from SEO/IM niche lists here):

Example Group 1:



Example Group 2:



Example Group 3:



Example Group 4:



Example Group 5:



Even though the changes in the Subject Line are pretty small in some cases, the differences in Open Rates can sometimes be dramatic.

Remember also that each group of 4 split-tested emails above had exactly the same email message once opened up.

Split testing your actual email message once you have found a clear Subject Line winner is the next step to push up CTR (I'll get to pushing up CTR in a future post here).

Typically though, those fairly healthy Open Rate numbers that you see above in the sub-list split test are NOT replicated when you run that out to a bigger list.

Interesting too - to me at least - is the version that I assumed would be the strongest is usually not necessarily the winner, hence the value of testing (not exactly groundbreaking is it!).

Why Use A Small Sub-List Terry?

The reason I use a small sub-list for split testing is because of AWeber's current limitations.

For example, let's say I have a main list of 20,000 email subscribers in a particular niche.

With AWeber's current constraints, I cannot create a 1,000 subscriber subset of that main list, split-test 4 different Subject Lines on that subset of 1,000 and then email the winning version to the remaining 19,000 without subscribers from my test subset group getting emailed again with basically the same message.

Personally, I find it incredible that AWeber doesn't offer that in 2015 but in my view, AWeber needs to get serious about new feature development.

That's why on blogs I own, there will normally be several different optin offers that, more or less, appeal to the same audience. Each optin offer will then connect to DIFFERENT AWeber lists so that I have the sub-list split testing option.

Yes it is a bit more work to create more lists and copy autoresponders from one list to another (that's actually very fast in AWeber using the 'Campaign Sharing' function) but the testing benefits you can see from the above results.

And, if I'm sending out a one-off broadcast email and see a big spike of popularity on one particular test version, I'll add it into an autoresponder sequence and see if it continues to perform well there.

You can also get good ideas for Subject Lines in your niche from buzzsumo.com which measures virally-popular content.

Technique #2:

This is the big one and hardly any email marketers that I track (that's a lot of them) do this or do it very much.

Again, I don't do this on every single email and this should be an iffttt.com-type feature on AWeber but on important emails I do which is to RE-email the same message to people who didn't open that message the first time around, 24 hours after the first was sent.

I then repeat it again on the remainder of the list who didn't open the message on the first OR second re-emailing.

Each time, this pushes up your Open Rates because:

[a] Everyone is busy and your non-opening subscribers may just have missed your email the first time around (everyone's inbox is crowded);

[b] Your Subject Line didn't grab them the first time around so choose a different one that still performed well from your sub-list test and use that instead (always be compiling Subject Lines that have done well for future re-use);

[c] If you don't, your Open Rate cannot go up i.e. you have nothing to lose.

How Do you Do That?

Here we are working with 'Segments' (meaning smaller groups of email subscribers within your list/s) in AWeber. If you already know how to do this, skip ahead to the next technique.

These screenshots are from a demo teaching AWeber account of mine:

1. Choose the correct List in AWeber and click on 'Manage Subscribers':



2. From the dropdown menu, choose 'Message not opened':



3. Next choose between Broadcast messages (one-offs) and Followups (automated sequenced messages), then click on the message where you want to RE-email those list subscribers who did not open that particular message + click on Search:



4. From the listed subscribers (doesn't matter how many are there - these are screenshots from a demo teaching account), give this group (AWeber calls them 'Segments') a unique name and click on Save:



You can now send an email to that group and then track who fails to open that 2nd message and email them by repeating the above process but with the 2nd email 'unopeners'.

Technique #3:

Pay attention to the TIME OF DAY that your emails are received by your subscribers.

Overwhelmingly, I see 6am-9am (Monday-Friday) as the best times/days for your email to land in your subscriber's inbox in terms of Open Rates BUT always test for yourself.

9am-midday does OK too but not as consistently well as the 6am-9am slot.

Obviously you need to test what works best for your list and mix it up occasionally.

Setting delivery times in AWeber for Broadcast emails requires the 'Scheduling' function:



whereas setting delivery times for Followup automated messages in AWeber means using the 'Send Window' feature:



These appear during the message creation process AFTER you have saved your message and are going through the Next pages afterwards in the process:

Technique #4:

Sadly, this doesn't work with AWeber but is fine with most of the other big email services like Mailchimp, GetResponse etc.

If you are using Leadpages (recommended) in your email marketing, there is an option - IF a visitor to your site is logged in to Facebook while visiting your optin page - to have your Leadpages optin form automatically populate the form with that person's Facebook email address e.g.



Inside your individual Leadpages or Leadboxes, go to 'Integration Settings', enable 'Use Facebook Integration', click on OK and Save:



Most of us have multiple email addresses now so getting someone's Facebook email address rather than another one that they may use for getting free lead magnets can push up your Open Rate as it's more likely to be seen in that inbox where their Facebook notification emails arrive.

On the negative side, some visitors won't feel comfortable with that and will type in another email address they use but on the whole, most visitors won't mind.

BUT, it doesn't (currently) work with AWeber or mobile devices.

Bonus Technique:

This may not work in your niche or with your list - test everything out! - but I have seen good Open Rate spikes when using city-based geotargeting emails based on the IP address of the subscriber - you can choose city, state or country but usually the city is the one to go for.

Obviously you need to write your email message in such a way as to make it relevant to all your subscribers but it is doable and can work well e.g.



I have offices in Sofia and London, hence the mismatch here between address and city targeted in the Subject Line and email but you get the idea.

This feature works in BOTH Subject Lines and email messages and only requires you to add in {!geog_city} where you want their city name to appear:



While these techniques (mainly) help me get 50%+ Open Rates, the real key is to actually APPLY them - and all your marketing action - in a CONSISTENT, FOCUSED and DISCIPLINED way.

We IMers do seem to suck at that but the rewards of that consistent action with email marketing will far far outperform the ROI of any other approach in online business, in my experience.