How do I increase my open rate?

Start promoting numbers, so lets say your promoting a product to help them make money daily

Then start with `- You make X amount per day, click here` and follow that process

When you show people how to make profit, there will be a higher rate

Remember these are your subscribers, while hype and boastful claims might get you increased open rates, it can lead to a very short rocket trip.

Build a relationship with your list. Go the extra mile, maybe move some over to social media for quick responses. People respond well with 2 way communications.

As far as subject lines, you have to make your emails stand out over the tons people receive everyday. Boastful claims and hype are not needed, but simple formatting of the subject line such as ie Your name - Have a look at my new review on X product. While simple it breaks up the format a little. Brands you to the email as an individual. Try that.

Honesty and transparency will get you farther.

You might want to clean your list of non openers, especially if
it's over 6 month old because lists expire unlike what we would
like to believe. That'll instantly increase your open rates.

I know it's not what you want to hear. But, you might want
to try to engage them first then do some list hygiene.

Open rates are irrelevant.

What matters is sales and ROI.

FREE stuff and not trying to sell to your subscribers all the time will work. Whenever you try to sell things to them on a normal basis they will begin to view you as a greedy seller instead of someone that looks out for their best interest.

Do a Google search for "Ben Settle email" and study his stuff.

Open rate has a few key important aspects

1) The name it's coming from

This is built up over both a short, and long period of time.

I recommend sending more often so that people can become 'fanatics' of your brand

2) Subject line

Without giving away the farm with every best opener I've got...

I recommend, once again, is that you send more often to figure out what works best (subject line wise)

3) Post subject line

This carries the least amount of weight in terms of opens...

However, many times this can become a continuation of your subject line.

For example, which email do you think would have a better open % based on the first sentence:

"Hey, it's James"

or

"I've never felt a worse pain in my life..."

Anyway, what you think about expands...

Keep thinking, keep doing, keep growing

Build that relationship up the right way, and you won't really think about Open rates or CTR that much anymore. People think about those metrics when they haven't built up a relationship with their list.

If your list isn't that big, then yes, those metrics can give you an IDEA only of what's going on, but other than that, focus on relationship building AS WELL as PROFIT.

Mix it up.

With that said, use Curiosity based subject lines. Write a few out, and ask yourself if you would click on it because you were "curious".

hi
the truth is that IF the people on your list KNOW your name,
then your NAME (email's from name) is the most important factor...

build a "brand" or "name"
and THAT gets responded to more than any subject line ever will.

"Tables and Ladders and Chairs..Oh my!" .....great subject line...best ever...
but it pales in comparison to an email sent from your actual friend or family member


if your name does not warrant that kind of response,
then build your name/brand up by giving more value to your subs,
so they look for ward to your name/brand showing up in their inbox

protect your reputation at all times, and you should be fine!

This is really good advice. Glad I checked this post out.

A newsletter is so important, and your audience chose to subscribe to you newsletter, so they need to be treated like treasured gold.

If you send them broadcast emails all the time, which you sell, sell, sell to them, then their going to get annoyed with this approach. I've certainly had it when I've unsubscribed to a email list because of this reason.

My advice to you: create unique content which doesn't appear on your website. How can you help your audience? Can you give tips which they can't get anywhere else? Remember to always help your audience out, and develop a relationship with them.

Embed this technique into your autoresponder sequence, and broadcast your own products alongside this. So, if your autoresponder series goes out on say Monday, Tuesday's and Wednesday's, your 'selling' would be on the other two days.

I hope this helped.

Creating value is great, but it is probably irrelevant when it comes to your open rate. Your competing against hundreds of E-mails in someones inbox. I'm not sure how your value is going to stick out.
Which E-mail subject would you open: When monkey's fly out of my....Anyway,you got to see this!
or
Free webinar on how to capture leads at .10 cents a click

My bet is that human nature will go for option 1

I guess there is only so many ways you can skin a cat, or in this case write a better subject line. If my list is 6 months old and no one is buying chances are they will never buy. So the only way i can convert them is to offer another product! So this begs my next question, how many marketers offer other products to monetize their list. And if so is this a good strategy or should you stick to your core business?

All the major factors that determine open-rates relate to what happens before, while and immediately after people subscribe to a list.

Using broadcasts is certainly (and verifiably) one of the things that can reduce open-rates: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7301227

It's not just about words, John. It's about expectation-setting and continuity.

This thread will help you: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6123982

This alienates people and loses them. They've seen it all before. Most people who actually want that stuff are never going to be proper customers anyway, so it isn't worth catering to them.

It's too late for that. Different subject-lines can make a difference, but even if you double the open-rate for this list, its open-rate would still be pretty awful? In the long run, what matters is to start a new list and handle new subscribers very differently right from the outset, in future.

Here are four more threads which will repay careful reading and might help you quite a bit ...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8661178

Lists: How Long to Presell - Averages

Website or squeeze page

Where to get reports to give away on opt in page? (ignore the title, the post linked-to here is about something else!)

Your "core business" should probably include multiple products?

I promise I don't mean it impolitely at all, John, but these other questions are kind of academic, if 95% of your own subscribers aren't even willing to open an email from you.

You really do need to address that problem first, by learning about expectation-setting, continuity and earning subscriber respect and trust. I'd start here, honestly.


.

I'd love to see the results of your "test"

I agree a lot with Alexa here though I DO use broadcasts and see little negative affect.

It's all about what happens BEFORE people opt in.

If before they opt in they've seen that you are someone who is knowledgeable, can be trusted, has information they wanted to know and is willing to give it away upfront without asking for anything in return they will opt in willingly and DEMAND your emails.

That's not too difficult to do with a blog / content rich site but it's tricky to do with a cold and heartless squeeze page.

Couple your awesome content, value and relationship building with setting their expectations properly and sticking to them on your thank you page and welcome emails helps a lot.

Send them REAL value in your emails and not just junk and promos and you will continue to see consistent open rates MUCH higher than 5%.

Anything less than 30% is a complete disaster for me. I aim for 40%+ on every email.

I've seen open rates of up to 67% using segmentation (emailing to specific segments of my list / re-mailing to unopens)

BTW my subscribers receive emails from me every 2nd day (or every day in the first week).

Well it seems like most of what I would advise has already been said so I won't go and repeat it. However, one thing that hasn't been said yet is to include webdings in your subject line. I notice very few people actually do this, but each time I do it my open rates increase. I get most of my webdings from here: Wingdings character set and equivalent Unicode characters

You just copy and paste them into your subject line.

I would like to say that truth, honesty and results get more opens, but that's not what my testing says.

I've found that spammy headlines like 'Wow! Powerful Method to Make 1 Million Dollars!' get double or triple the opens and clicks as compared to real-world, practical titles like '3 Email Headlines that Work', so my advice would be to keep it spammy and mysterious.

When you start to share real proof in your email headlines and body copy, people just get confused and don't respond.

So my advice would be to keep your emails spammy, juicy and mysterious. Use little text and make it very enticing. Save your hard facts and evidence for the sales page. If you're using an email capture page, make it just like your email: spammy and enticing.

The goal is to send as many people to your sales page as possible.

Unless the subject has something that indicates that the recipient is gonna make some profit out of it, it is very unlikely that he/she will open the email.

Everybody is talking in here about increasing the open rate, but who pays attention to the click to open rate?
The popular "Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, Oh my!" subject line wasn't so effective just for the sake of it... it had a certain impact on a certain list, for a certain mailer.
The subject line must grab attention, yet it also has to be strongly connected with the email content. You don't just want people to open your messages, you want them to click the link, put a lead.
So I'm just saying... don't promise wild gooses in the subject line if your mailer is about green pigs...

I think that a 5% open rate is not bad.

If you want to get bigger open rates, the best thing you can do is to test all sorts of headlines. That is the biggest KEY to increase open rates in my view.

having element of suspense with subtle promise in the subject title works for me e.g. "can't believe I make $463.07 by doing this"

I really like Stuart Walker's advice from this thread because, since I'm just starting my list and I want to populate it with quality, not necessarily quantity, I want to know how to go about it.

If people aren't opening from the BEGINNING, I'm thinking they won't later, even though good headlines may be used.

The question is, how to get them to know and trust you from the beginning, so that your open rates will be higher. I'm providing valuable content in my emails, and on my website/blog. Shouldn't this be enough?

You have to be providing them value BEFORE they opt in and through a blog is a good way to do it.

If they come to your blog and liked your content enough to sign up to your list then you're off to a good start because they are asking you to send them MORE great content.

Use your emails not just to promote but to build a relationship by providing a ton more value and inject your personality into the emails and share snippets of your life.

its about delivering value to them with your emails, if I open someones email and theres value to me in there I will open their next XX emails until theres too many with not enough value then I may unsubscribe. I wont expect every email to be a home run unless the topic is hyper niched as that's unrealistic .
Is your 5% a regular crowd more or less?

So it could be most of your 5% are those getting the value, the others didn't so you need to reconnect with them , put the regular non openers on a different list and email them totally differently to how youd email your 5%

Thanks for sharing your most success info for email marketing. What is this useful most for site rank?

Some really great points here.

I will repeat a few, but, here is my list of most important one ...

1. Always use the same from name and from email address.
2. NEVER use a free FROM address like gmail, yahoo, etc. Always use your own domain.
3. NEVER use a email like noreply@. These actually trigger spam scores. Use a REAL email, which is reachable.
4. Build a STRONG relationship with your list.

Subject lines ARE important, but, if you have a GREAT relationship, you can have virtually anything as a subject line. I am on some lists that I open email from, 100% regardless of the subject line. I just look at the from name, and if it's someone I know, like and trust, I always open.

Just a small point to remember ... The only 2 ways to track opens is a hidden graphic pixel or a click on a link. If images loading is off, and they don't click, even if they open, it won't track as an open. Opens are ALWAYS higher than what you think. Could be a few, or, could be MANY.

Sometimes less is more!

The quality of your list directly plays a role in the success of your open rates.

If the people have signed up from solo ads there is indication that the traffic has been abused exceedingly.

Sometimes, niche, title, quality of content also increase or diminishes your open rates.
If a reader can not learn to trust you from the initial broadcast your trust flow will suffer.

Don't try to sell in all your messages.
Be creative in your broadcast and don't limit yourself to your niche only, it's not a bad idea to include news in your niche or crack jokes.

The list is just endless!

If you want to get some ideas for subject lines head over to your spam box and browser through your spam emails, whilst they contain crap often the subject lines are enticing to click on, but like others have said you have to build a solid relationship with your list to have lasting success, every time your readers receive an email from you, they have to expect awesomeness, and ideally you want to sent out 2 content emails for every promotional email, send too many offers and your list will melt away like ice in the sun....

Make your emails so people WANT to sign up and stay on.

I don't just pitch - I share updates with my life, my family, my health issues, etc. I become a real person to those who read.

Hope that helps!

In my experience a good way of maintaining good open rates is to build auto responder emails that allow and encourage interaction between you and the receiver.

For example, I have an AR sequence that generates consistent 30% plus open rates by building a rapport with my audience. I do create that expectation from the get go, but every email looks something like this:

"NAME, week 1 and what you can expect" etc

Within the email is copy that is geared as if the person was actually receiving an email directly from me, again this plays into what many people have mentioned about authority, transparency and authenticity. The email drives the user to either make contact with me or make a purchase of my own products. Some emails also have subjects like "NAME, how are you feeling?", to which I get massive response from.

This seems to work well for me, and I now have a very responsive, 20k plus person list.

My 2 cents!

Your opening statement says it all. You have "a list of 2,000 people." If you had said that you have "2,000 subscribers to your email newsletter," you would not be experiencing this problem.

Success in email (and the Internet in general) is built upon two foundational principles; Permission and Engagement (Relationship).

So... you need to ask yourself two questions...

1) How, exactly, did you acquire those 2,000 names? Did you get express permission to email them when they responded to an offer that was generated directly from you and did that offer (even if you gave it away for free) have value to the subscriber?

2) How often are you mailing these folks (more is better than less) and what kind of content are you offering? Do you give them information that they find to be useful in addition to offers that you send their way?


"What kinds of words are people responding to get a 15-25% open rate?"

There are no magic "words" that force people to respond. People engage in content that comes from people they know who impart valuable information.

To the OP,

You cannot really change your open rates. People know what to expect from and have decided it doesn't provide enough value for them.

Your really only solution is to clear the existing list from people who do not open, and with your news subscribers create better and more engaging relationships.

1. Keep the subject line short (under 50 characters is best), and make sure you make one important point
2. Never try to trick your audience with a misleading or vague subject line
3. Personalize the subject line by including the recipient's first name and other pertinent information.
4. Build a sense of urgency with your subject line, and ensure there is an incentive for the recipient to open the email
5. The subject line should often include your company or newsletter name.
6. Research, and avoid, typical spam words.
7. Choose the right "From" name and email address.
8. Experiment with various email send times
9. Find the right frequency of communications.
10. Test

Creating a catchy title is the key!
Bring value with your follow up messages so people open your emails.
I have 23% open rate in most of my follow up messages. You can even send emails promoting just affiliate products but try to have a good title. like: 10,000 UNIQUE VISITORS PER DAY? NO WAY!

Chris

Be engaging.. I sometimes ask my list questions about there opinions and what they would like to receive from me. You'll be amazed how powerful this is in the long run.

HI try to use numbers to make attention of people to open email, i mean headlines

Spend some time on your subject line.

Check out how the gurus write their subject line and swipe from them.

If you are solo ad seller, 5% is a dream.