Internet marketers, bloggers and network marketers alike are on a steady hunt to improve email open rates.
Most online businesses rely on engagement with their readers, followers, customers, prospects. Getting these people to opt in to their email lists is a great way to create that engagement and pave the way for serious relationship building.
That’s why it’s so important for marketers to
1. get people to opt in to their email lists, and
2. get the same people to eagerly open their emails.
The vast majority clients and students I’ve worked with are so focused on step one in the process (getting people to subscribe to their list), that they give little thought to step two.
And there’s a good reason for that.
We can easily wrap our minds around the concept of offering people something that makes them want to “sign up” to receive it.
Most of us can think of an ebook, video or podcast that our readers would find valuable. So we get to work on creating an enticing free offer and figure the rest will fall in place.
Well, that’s a good place to start.
The problem is, that once people start to opt in to your list in order to receive you enticing offer, you are immediately faced with the next challenge in the process.
That challenge is, how to get people to open your emails on a regular basis.
A large percentage of the people who opted in to your list will probably open your first email. That’s because your first email will deliver on your promise. If you promised a free ebook on kite making, your first email will essentially give people access to that ebook.
If 60 of 100 people typically open that first email, then you can expect a 60% “open rate” for your first email.
But what about your second, third and fourth email. What can you expect the open rates for those to be? What about your 33rd, 105th and so forth?
Email marketing is a long term process.
That’s often comes as bad news to novice marketers. They frequently think along the lines of giving a free offer, then immediately selling something related to it.
So, perhaps, the free offer is an ebook containing affirmations to overcome low self-esteem. Then, by the second email, you start promoting a paid video course on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
It’s not unusual for you open rates to plummet from 60% for email #1 and #2, to 5% for #3, 2% for #4 and then a typical less than 1% for as long as you keep emailing to the same set of subscribers.
Do Subject Lines Rule?
Typically, marketers try to improve their open rate by using more clever subject lines.
In fact, while subject lines are important, open rates are affected by much more than that.
It’s true that subject lines need to be compelling to get people to open your emails, but if they expect to receive good content from you, the battle is half over.
Is Content King?
The content of your emails is really far more significant than the subject lines.
People will probably open your emails if they have been receiving good content from you in the past. That builds their expectation to receive good content as a matter of course.
On the other hand, if your content consists of blatant sales pitches and little more, your readers will come to expect that level of content. In that case, you will probably have a very low open rate for as long as you continue to deliver that level of content.
How To Improve Email Open Rates
Here’s a quick list of things you can do to improve your email open rates.
1. Pre-qualify Your Subscribers
This means, don’t invite people to subscribe to your list unless they want what you’ll be offering.
In the above example, people joined your email list to receive affirmations, and to overcome low self-esteem.
How do you know that?
They told you.
When your subscribers said “yes” to your offer for an ebook with affirmations, they let you know they are interested in affirmations. When they said “yes” to your offer to deliver affirmations to overcome low self-esteem, they further qualified themselves.
When you deliver these people a steady stream of emails promoting an NLP course, you have jumped to the conclusion that because they are interested in affirmations, they will want to buy an NLP course. This is a leap of faith on your part, and not a response to what your prospects have clearly told you about themselves.
If your entire email campaign is geared toward selling an NLP course, then you’d be better off giving away a free ebook specifically about NLP techniques. Forget about affirmations and low self-esteem. Those are not tightly targeted to your offer and therefore, you’ll lose your subscribers’ interest very quickly.
2. Engage Your Subscribers
Engage your subscribers by helping them solve problems you know that they have.
If they need to house train their puppy, let them know you have information that will help. Give them some tips and tricks they can use to start their puppy training.
Ask them questions about challenges they’ve had with their puppy and then help them meet those challenges in subsequent emails.
Give them good information they can use. Be friendly and conversational.
When people come to know you as a person instead of a marketer, they will be far more likely to be a loyal customer as well as subscriber for a long time to come.
3. Value Your Subscribers’ Time
I know a lot of email marketers believe that you should build relationships with people by giving them long stories, philosophical insights, 30 minute videos and the like.
I won’t say that those methods don’t work, but for myself,
I find that when you are brief and to the point, you are telling your readers that you value their time. They have other things to do beyond reading your emails.
If you are going to develop a long story or link them to a 30 minute video, I suggest you tell them up front.
Somewhere in your email message, you could say something like this:
“To learn more about this, I’ve produced a 30 minute video tutorial. Please link to it here now, or bookmark it for when it’s a more convenient time for you.”
Or, you could start a long story with something like this:
“Now, I’ll tell you how I made this important discovery.
This is story is a bit long, but if you’ve got a few minutes, I think you’ll find it’s well worth it.”
These kinds of segways give people the courtesy of letting them know what’s ahead, and hinting that they don’t have to stay for the long haul if they don’t have the time. When you give people this simple courtesy, they’ll be more likely to open future emails from you.
4. Segment Your List
Segmenting your list allows you to keep your information highly relevant.
If your initial list is for people interested in losing weight, you might find out what segment of this list is interested in exercise.
Send that segement of your list information and offers related to exercise.
Find out what segment is interested in juicing programs.
Focus on that in your emails to that segment.
Maybe some of your subscribers are interested in your weight loss business opportunity. That would be yet another segment of your weight loss list.
Segment your list by simply asking people if they are interested in these things. If they are, ask them to sign on to that segment to follow the information you’ll be offering there.
This ensures that you are giving people what they want, and not just guessing at what you think you might be able to interest them in.
Improve Your Open Rates Before Building A Huge List
Too many marketers rush into building large lists before they know what they’re really doing.
Don’t rush it.
Build a small list and learn to make it profitable, responsive and engaged.
The old school wisdom here was… who cares if you only have a 1% open rate. If your list is big enough, that will still add up to a lot of open emails and purchases of your offers.
Just like Google works hard to be sure people find high quality information in their search results, emails providers are getting very strict about delivering only email messages that their subscribers truly want.
Don’t try to game the system.
It’s in your interest to provide your subscribers with emails they WANT to open, not ones they’re tricked into with slick and misleading subject lines.
Study the above guidelines to make sure your email marketing campaign is on firm footing. This will go a long way to help you not only improve email open rates, but build a long-term sustainable business in the process.
Do you have an opt in offer on your blog, Facebook page or squeeze page?
How do you follow up with your subscribers in your email campaigns? Have you found this guide helpful to you in that regard?
I’d love to have your comments below, and please… share this article on your social media sites.