How to overcome low open rates in email marketing?

Hi francis,

I am not an expert in email marketing per see, but i have done a tone of research on email marketing. My advice is not expert but I hope you will take consideration.

From more than 50% of the resources I consulted about email marketing they said the headline is the only secret to getting you mail opened. That is is the first step. Of course you have to master other skills as well especially using persuasive & power words. But the headline makes the difference. Probably you are using words that have high spam alerts thereby sending your emails to the spam box right away.



Key point here is compelling short headlines. Learn how to make headlines.

Thank you

One thing is; Be different, you maybe sounds like your competitors and they might give more value than you. Spy on your competitors and see what you can do different.

If you want people to open up your email then you have to get past the spam filter first. Therefore avoid using too many exclamation marks or CAP lock words.

Also approach the subject of your email in a story form. Through this you will generate curiosity and get their attention.

Do you know the domain makeup of your data?
Are you using a seed list and testing your inbox placement?

I would want to know if there is a deliverability problem, before trying to fix something that's possibly not broken.

Additionally, you should achieve everyone that doesn't open in the past 30 days or so, to keep your engagement up and deliverability.

However, if you don't know if you have good deliverability to start with, then it all becomes more problematic.

Open rates are never a good indicator of conversion rates, first thing.

Second thing, there might be several reasons your open rates are so low:
1. You were using click and bait techniques to improve your open rates and now your list is sensitized to it.
2. Your email subject lines are not good enough to entice curiosity.
3. Your email body is fancy, with lot of colors and graphics that turns off your prospect.

Work on the subject lines.

Thanks
-J

keep your list clean
Always test your subject lines
make sure you entertain with your emails... be unique

Hope this helps!

Since last one year, I am working in email marketing and tried number of ways to improve open rates. Here are few proven idea that worked for me!!

1: Block all IP addresses that are blacklisted or have higher bounce rate.
2: Subject line matters to enhance the open rate but don't add spam words as it prevents your email delivering in inbox.
3: Send emails to those subscribers who already opened your email earlier. You will surely achieve a good open rate.
Then after a week or two, start sending emails to new subscribers but keep the number limited. I think you should keep the 80:20 ratio. 80% to opened email source and 20% to new subscribers.

I know you are already doing a great job with your email marketing, have you tried changing some parts of your approach? Maybe it has been a little familiar to your audience and needs some changes.

I do agree with the witty subjects, they feed people's curiosity.

Lots of factor.

Try to write more engagement headlines and try to send more Free content.

but if u marketed your list too much in the past, it's hard to re-awaken it

make sure that you have a good relationship with your subscriber... give them more value and value..

Are you sure that your emails are not filtered to their spam folder? This is the most common problem, that email marketers encounter. All their hard work go to waste because of this, so you must be able to make sure that your emails do not go that route so it could actually be read by the person it was intended to.

You can increase your open rate by cleaning your list.

The way it works is that the email companies (Gmail etc.) can see exactly how many of your emails get opened by their clients, and they rate you accordingly, so it's a kind of feedback loop . . . if your email rate is low, Gmail will rate you poorly, so more of your emails end up in spam folders, so your email rate gets even lower etc.

The solution is to remove from your list members who don't open emails. Most mailing-list management-systems provide you information on which of your members open your emails and which don't (and which bounce, etc.). For example, MailChimp has a star-rating system for each member of your list. So you can move all the members who have never opened any emails from you, to another list, where you try once or twice to get them to open something, then delete them if they still don't.

Doing that gets on to the positive feedback loop . . . since a greater percentage of your members open your emails, Gmail gives you a better rating, so less of your emails end up in spam folders, so more of your emails are seen and read, and your open-rate continues to increase.

People get obsessed by the size of the list, but that's irrelevant. Which would you rather have, a list of 100 who opened every email you send and buys often, or a list of a million, who never open anything and never buy? What matters is responsiveness, and YOU can improve that by cleaning your list, as well as by posting high quality, relevant content etc.

Hope that makes sense

Chris

How long have you been mailing your subscribers? How about the unsubscribe rate, how is it?

Maybe your subscribers are starting to get bored with the topics you send them or that they feel they have gotten what they needed from you already. Try to offer something new, something you have not emailed them before yet, and see how it goes.

Best of luck,
Desiree

Hey pal,the headline is the key.Try to personalize your emails starting from the headline,and also find ways to wake your subscribers interest.

Your headlines might be bad, they might be not interested in what you sell anymore and so on. My advice make different campaigns for different people. Look at the people who open and who don't then those who don't open your messages send them to different campaing if still not interested kcik them out of your list

I faced low open rates long time ago while starting my email marketing campaign. At that time I was having difficulty to built 50 subscribers and none of them opened my emails at all. Finally, I could conclude that 100% of them not reading it and that made me fail.

I had thought that this was not going to work for me while still trying for another few months. One day, I finally found the reasons why they don’t read my emails and to prove what I thought was right I insist to keep on trying. Until today one of my campaigns has finally reached 70% open rate. What I did was that I gave them what they want for opting in into my list and helped to solve their problems but one thing for sure, I do not send them my offers frequently. Furthermore, I did not ask them what they want along the way due to the fact that they have already told me when they gave me their email address from the beginning and they are expecting what I had promised.

The other way to increase your open rate is by having less bounced email (failed to reach them) this could be one of the few reasons why your open rate is low and need to clean up. Sending them emails without solving their problems would also be an excuse for them to left it unopened. You may try to change email title to experiment your open rate. Wish you luck.

I use mailchimp and my organic list opens have dropped from 46% to 18%. Sent out about 10 campaigns in the last 60 days for a warehouse sale. I also noticed gmail puts them in the "promo" tab which I doubt many people even check. My emails have been various promo deals and content/contests related to the warehouse sale and the product.

I enter the emails directly in mailchimp that doesn't require a separate opt in, since the customer manually signed up on our email list. other option is on facebook page that integrates with mailchimp, that does require a seperate opt in email to customer. I'm guessing that is even lower as far as sign ups and list building.