In today’s fast-paced digital society, simply sending a general email to your audience isn’t enough to boost email open rates; you need your emails to be personal, relevant, and interesting.
If your emails are not being opened, clicked, or taken action upon, then there will not be any returns from your email — no matter how well you think your email was organized or planned.
This is why we’re excited to introduce you to SendMails.io now. SendMails.io is an exciting platform for marketers and business owners to automate campaigns to reach audiences, engage audiences, and measure performance all in one place.
In this article, we will share three actionable ideas that you can implement to improve your open rate and engagement with your emails so that your emails are worth sending.
Create Engaging Subject Lines
The subject line is the first thing a recipient experiences when they see your email arrive in their inbox, and often it is one of the deciding and most important reasons whether or not the email is opened or ignored.
It literally does not matter if no one ever clicked on your well-organized, well-planned email that had a ton of informative content.
Tips to write subject lines that will be opened:
✅Be short and clear- stay in the 40-60 character length so it displays on mobile devices.
✅Use personalization when appropriate- Adding the person’s name, or some other personalized content, will make it feel relevant, “Sarah, your exclusive weekly offer”.
✅Create curiosity, but do not mislead them- “you will never guess this new marketer’s tool”.
✅Create urgency or exclusivity- “limited time only” or “exclusive offer” will help the email reader take immediate action.
SendMails.io makes it easy to A/B subject line test for you! This is a wonderful opportunity to play with a mad number of subject line scenarios and find the best one for your audience.
Ultimately, over time, you will know the subject line that you can use, which effectively increases open rates.
Segment Your Audience for Maximum Relevance
Every subscriber is unique, and considering them as not can only lead them to disengagement from your email.
Segmenting your audience allows you to have the right content and message delivered to the right people, resulting in more opens and clicks.
The first way to segment your audience is by behavioral segmentation. This includes tracking actions taken by the user, such as clicks, visits to a website, or previous purchases, for the purpose of sending content proactively.
The second way to segment your audience is by demographic segmentation. Email content could be based on the recipient’s age, location, job title, etc.
The last way to segment your audience is by lifecycle segmentation. New subscribers need to be treated differently, as do users you engaged but did not unsubscribe and removed as inactive contacts, who will all require different messaging that represents continued engagement.
SendMails.io allows for easy ordering of dynamic segmentation in your essential order to automate who gets certain emails when they are behavior-driven, preference-based, or based on other past historical interactions you have had with them.
When you create content for a certain group of subscribers, it should feel like this email was created especially for them, generating better open rates and engagement.
Example: If the subscriber purchased something from your store, frequently the person is likely to receive a follow-up email, thinking something like “you may also want to consider adding this item to your shopping cart”, or send that subscriber another piece of content that relates to the previous purchase.
For new subscribers, you could also send them a welcome email series that welcomes that new subscriber.
Use Interactive Content to Drive Engagement
Once you have your audience to open your email, the next task is to engage them. You can do this by including interactive content that pulls them in and inspires them to click through for even more successes for your email campaigns.
If you are looking for some content ideas that drive engagement, here are some ideas:
🎯QR Codes: You could incorporate a QR code in the email that links them to a landing page, promotional offer, or product demo. With Adobe Express QR Code Generator, you can also edit the way it looks so it fits right into your brand.
🎯Images or GIFs: Visual content can highlight product, promotional, or key messaging much more effectively than in this cell.
🎯Clear call-to-action (CTA): The CTA button should be very obvious and easy to find, with a message that tells them exactly what to do next: “purchase now”, “register for a webinar”, or “download the guide”.
It is super easy to send your interactivity with SendMails.io – you can route dynamic content automatically, track user clicks on QR codes and buttons, and measure whether those users took action and engaged with your email.
The combination of automation and interactivity will make the email experience for your audience much more engaging and encourage them to open your email to take a meaningful action.
Extra Tactics for Optimizing Results
You can also get more from your email campaigns even if you already have a strong subject line, good segmentation, and interactive content—they could get even better with a couple of different steps.
📌Legitimizing Send Times
Find analytics that can help you figure out when your audience is most active in email and set your emails to send at those times. SendMails.io has even automated that process based on the user’s time zone and engagement.
📌Advanced Follow-Up Tactics
Not everyone will open one email. Automate your first follow-up email, so as not to get burned calling it a “drip campaign,” with a slightly more effective message or subject line to those who didn’t open your previous attempt. You want to essentially re-engage them, without being entirely spammy.
📌Constantly Test & Iterate
Pay close attention to your open, click, and conversion rates, then iterate based on the findings. You will slowly build up an arsenal of knowledge from all your data collection and set up effective strategies based on your findings. Eventually, you optimize over time and reach even more people and obtain the best ROI possible.
Conclusion
Improving open rates and engagement on email campaigns shouldn’t be hard, and it isn’t when you remember three simple things: writing subject lines they can’t resist, segmenting your audience for relevancy, and writing engaging content.
Doing just these three things will go a long way to get your emails noticed, creating opportunity, brand enrichment, and hopefully revenue for your business!
SendMails.io simplifies these three strategies with our powerful automation, personalization, and analytics tools. Just a reminder, the goal is marketing, building relationships with the people on your list.
There is no harm in adding a little consistency, but the majority of the time, if you can leverage these three strategies with your emails, not only will you get your emails opened and read, but you will also build rapport, engage, and ultimately sell your leads!
Try SendMails.io, research shows the average person receives 147 emails per day, make every one count, and an opportunity to connect, engage, and grow your business!