What is the open rate?
The open rate measures the percentage of recipients that open an email marketing campaign. Every time a subscriber opens an email, it counts towards your open rate.
Why does open rate matter?
If nobody opens your marketing emails, then your campaigns have no chance of achieving their goals. That’s why open rate is one of the most important metrics for evaluating the success of an email marketing strategy.
Over time, open rates can help you understand the connection you have with your audience. If you have high open rates, you know that your audience sees value in the emails you send out. Consistently low open rates are a sign that you should reevaluate your email marketing strategy.
What is a good open rate?
A good open rate is generally considered to be between 15% and 25%, although this can vary by industry.
There are many different factors that can affect open rates, including the subject line of the email, the sender, the content of the email, and the audience.
It’s important to keep in mind that open rates are just one measure of the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. Other metrics like clicks, conversions, and overall engagement should also be taken into consideration.
Open rate vs click-through rate
What’s the difference between the open rate and the click-through rate?
The click-through rate refers to the percentage of email recipients who not only open an email, but also click a link inside it.
Click-through rates are lower than open rates, because there will always be people who open an email but do not click through.
How to improve the open rate of your email marketing campaigns?
Let’s take a look at some email campaign best practices that can help boost your open rates!
1. Subject line
The subject line is the most important part of your email marketing campaign. Along with the preheader text, it’s the first thing that your audience sees, which means it’s what they use to decide whether or not to open your email.
Therefore, you need to have a strong, relevant subject line that compels people to open your email.
Check out this article for some subject line inspiration.
2. Segmentation
You should ask yourself who the ideal target audience is before sending your emails. Will your entire list see it as valuable content or is it relevant for only some of them? You should consider segmenting your list and sending relevant content to each group of subscribers.
This type of personalization can raise your email open rate by up to 39%.
3. Sender
The email address that appears as the sender is another important aspect in every email marketing campaign. If the recipient doesn’t recognize the address, they’ll be suspicious of the email, and they’re less likely to open it. The email address used to send campaigns should usually include your brand’s name.
4. Timing
One secret to improving your email open rates is to find the right time to send them. If you notice that your open rates are low, try sending them out at a different time of day (or on a different day of the week).
5. Format for mobile devices
Most people use mobile devices to check their messages, so make sure that your formatting works on phones as well as desktops. Focus on designing emails that look great on all devices to improve your open rates.
