Email marketing does play a very important part of any marketing campaign. As important as it is to execute the emailing, measuring the success rate is vital too. And if you are trying your hands at judging how your email campaigns are performing, tracking the ‘open rates’ is the very first step.

Email open rates go on to portray how many people are actually giving attention to your curated email, what are your click rates & probability of conversions. It’s also a popular way to judge the subscribers’ engagement. While every subscriber may have his own habits & timings etc. an overall view of the open rates gives you an idea of how healthy your email campaigns are.

Everyone gets into email campaigning expecting really high open rates. But that’s not how it goes in all the cases. Here’s a report on open rates by Constant Contact. So if you’re worried about lower than expected email open rates, let’s discuss a few ways you can give it a push:

Right Amount of Contact

If you send too many emails, your subscribers will be annoyed and start ignoring the emails, or worse… they’ll unsubscribe. If you take too much time in between your emails, those will be lost amongst the hundreds of emails coming into their inbox every day. Some people may not even remember their association with you.

The wise thing is to find a balance i.e. a middle path which isn’t too annoying nor it’s too alien. If possible, you can also let your subscribers choose how often they’d like to receive emails from you.

There’s A Time For Everything

Because no one likes to go through their office emails outside of their office hours (unless you’re one of those tech founder cum billionaires). If you’re targeting a global audience, the first parameter is the subscriber’s time zone. Your email is straight going into the trash if it reaches the target when that guy is coming back home after a long tiring day at work.

Ideally… the most effective time is the 1st few hours of office i.e. 10 am to 12 pm. Some people also like to go through their email post lunch (1 pm to 3 pm).

Catchy Subject Lines

Most of the marketers don’t realize how important a good subject line is to their emails. However, a catchy/exciting or intriguing subject line does to an email what the toppings do to a pizza! 🙂 Try to make the subject line as inviting as possible with benefits or numbers to generate curiosity in the mind of the reader/subscriber.

Just make sure to keep your subject line short & crisp. If you’re sending emails in large numbers, you can also try your hands at A/B testing & get to know what’s working for you.

Keep It Mobile Friendly

The entire world runs on mobile devices nowadays. You just can not avoid it. Matter of fact, a report suggests that more than 55% of emails are now being read on mobile devices. So make sure your email template is responsive to mobile devices… in order to create the desired impression in the readers’ minds.

Avoiding a mobile-friendly design will result in a bad experience for the readers & they will loose their interests eventually. An optimal mobile experience will not only improve your open rates but also give you more chances at conversions! 🙂

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Let me know if you have any other ideas to improve your email open rates. I’d love to read them all 🙂