Open rate statistics are an important barometer for determining the success of your communications, but it’s important to remember that it’s not the only one - other statistics to monitor include click-through rates and number of forwards for each email you send. When you’re a small business employing email marketing, taking all of these statistics in account will help you achieve the greatest impact.
Email marketing can hold unlimited potential for helping small businesses grow. There are five key things that I recommend for small businesses when they are creating an email communication:
Target your audience. The beauty of email marketing is that you are able to send specific communications to targeted audiences. By tailoring content to a specific audience, you increase their interest and likelihood of opening your email.
Use the right “From” address. It’s a simple thing that’s often overlooked. People open emails from companies they know and do business with. For better recognition, make sure you use a "From" name and address that includes your name, company, product, or service name - whichever the recipient will know best. This best practice has never been more important. Your brand in the "From" line assures the recipient that the email is coming from a reliable and trusted source and builds familiarity and credibility - especially when repeated over time.
Grab them with your subject line. The subject line of your email tells readers what they can expect to read about or learn. It can help get your email delivered and convince recipients to open it and read further. The typical email subject line window has room for between 30 and 40 characters including spaces, so you must be brief. State a clear benefit; let the recipient know how your offer or content will save them money, time etc. Avoid punctuation and never use all capital letters in your subject line as your email will be more susceptible to filters. Never ever use tricks or gimmicks in the subject line.
Make it interesting. No one knows your customers better than you do. First, figure out what interests your audience. Listen to them. What do your customers ask you about when you discuss your business? Chances are, for every customer who asks a question, there are ten others with the same question. Make sure the content of your email is interesting (and easy to read) to your audience and they’re likely to open emails from you.
Give them something helpful. If you’re a small business owner, you have expertise in your field. Tell your audience something new. It doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, if you’re a baker, you could tell your subscribers how to make a delicious breakfast in only 15 minutes. If your subscribers think your information is valuable, they’re likely to pass it along to friends – thereby increasing your list size and growing your customer base.
Gail Goodman, CEO,
Constant Contact
The best way to improve open rates is by ensuring your email is delivered in the first place. On average, 20 percent of email never reach their destination because they are caught in spam filters erroneously, according to Pivotal Veracity, a company that provides email delivery tracking software.
Luckily, there are steps that marketers can take to ensure their emails arrive in their intended email inbox:
Ask to be added to the address book. Ask subscribers to add you to their address book, “Safe Sender” list or “People I Know” group to avoid the junk folder.
Maintain a consistent “from” name and address. Once subscribers add your “from address” to their address book, maintain the same address so your emails will continue to pass through as “Safe Senders.” More than 60 percent of consumers surveyed by Return Path said that knowing and trusting the sender was a key factor in determining if they would open an e-mail.
Use a Branded Subject Line. Next to the “from" address, subscribers focus on the subject line when deciding to either open or scrap an email. Restating your brand in the subject line is critical to the end-user “recognizing” your email and differentiating it from spam. According to a recent study, past experience with the sender is the number one influencer over whether a subscriber will open an email.
Minimize complaints to large ISPs. Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail all use shared filtering across their users, so customer complaints can prevent your inbox delivery. Make sure you send to only those subscribers who have given you explicit permission and expect your email.
Authenticate your email. In the age of spammers forging their identities and phishing, authenticating your email domain is critical and will lead to higher inbox rates and open rates. Familiarize yourself with SPF, Sender ID and the emerging encrypted format, DomainKeys, or work with a company that has expertise in this area.
Watch spam-like content. The junk mail filter in Outlook 2003 scans the content and sender of each message. Overly promotional words and phrases, multiple exclamation points, all capital letters and other text often used by spammers will trigger the filter.
Use a permission-based email marketing provider. Companies practicing only permission based email marketing, such as ExactTarget, are able to develop whitelist relationships with major ISPs, providing better deliverability.
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Chip House, vice president of privacy and deliverability,
ExactTarget.
% Opened = Quality of Relationship
Email open rates speak to the quality of the sender/recipient relationship. After getting past the delivery hurdle, marketers face the challenge of convincing their audience to open and read their email communications. This challenge is magnified by the fact that measuring opens can be difficult. Emails involving text messages, turned off images and email filters will potentially go untracked, leading to deceivingly low open rates. Bronto’s industry statistics illustrate this challenge and show that on average, only 24% of messages are opened in comparison to approximately 95% being delivered. To maximize open rates, we recommend that marketers focus on building QUALITY sender-recipient relationships.
To maximize open rates, marketers should focus on building QUALITY sender-recipient relationships.
Here are some considerations to keep in mind:
Relevancy. Regardless of the industry, marketers can optimize their open rates by striving to increase the relevancy of their communications. Targeted and localized messages lead to better open rates. This can be accomplished through segmenting email lists according to important criteria such as demographics, location, interests, purchases to name a few.
Personalization. Hand in hand with relevancy goes personalization. This can range from the simple (swapping in personal contact information like “Dear Charles”) to the complex (using dynamic content to send personalized versions of messages to each recipient or strategically targeted segments)
Conversations. Another technique for strengthening email relationships is to initiate a two-way conversation using surveys, polls and other embedded forms. This approach provides your subscribers an outlet for voicing their opinions and gives them a stake in the next email communication.
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Chaz Felix, Founder and COO,
Bronto Software
