One of the best things about email marketing is being able to tell just how many people open your emails, which is referred to as the open rate. Very few types of marketing can be this accurate in identifying how successful your campaigns are. When you know what a good open rate should be, you’ll be able to tell how well your campaigns are doing, and that will tell you whether you need to make any adjustments in your approach.
Average open rate
Although it can be difficult to assign an average to open rate (because it will change across industries), there is a basic formula which can be used to calculate what your open rate is. If you divide the number of emails which have been opened by the number of emails you sent, minus the number of bounced emails, you’ll know what your open rate is.
For instance, if you had 20 emails opened and you sent out 100 emails, but 20 of them bounced, your open rate would be 20 divided by 80 or 25%. In fact, the average open rate across all industries tends to be somewhere between 15% and 25%. If your specific open rate for any given campaign falls below that average, you should probably consider making some adjustments to your campaign, after finding out why your open rate was so low.
Increasing your open rate
There are several tactics you could put into place which might help to boost your open rate. Keep in mind that most people open emails with their smartphones, and that means you should keep your subject lines concise and easily readable, so they won’t be truncated. Take advantage of that subject line to try and convey a sense of urgency to the reader, without including any false hype.
That kind of approach will eventually cause your readers to dismiss your emails prematurely and not take you seriously. Both in your subject line and in the text of your email, make sure to avoid words which sound like spam, because this will just arouse the suspicions of the reader, and it’s more than likely that your email will end up in the spam folder. Keep the subject line very clear and very easy to read and understand.
Another good tactic to use so that your open rate can be increased is to personalize your email campaigns. Recipients are always much more inclined to open and read through an email when they have the impression that it’s aimed directly at them. You don’t have to invest any more effort in this than including their name on the subject line, and in fact, it’s a good idea to send out such emails on important dates in the reader’s life, e.g. birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
