Newsletter marketing still counts as one of the most effective ways to market your company or service. As such, how often people open emails from you has a big impact on your bottom line. If you find that your email open rate is a bit lackluster, you may want to take steps to correct that. Fortunately, we can help. At MyCity Social, we get asked a lot about the best practices in newsletter digital marketing, including newsletter open rates. Here are five of our best tips for getting people to open the emails that you send to them.
1. Start With a Fresh List
It’s tempting to buy names for your list. It’s also tempting to think that your old, tired list will never need revamping. However, if you want to inspire good open rates among your readers, then it’s beneficial to keep your list fresh.
Let’s start with a purchased list. Yes, people do buy lists and even have some luck with them. However, the best list you can have is the one you create yourself from people who know your work and who have purchased from you before.
After compiling a list of people who like your work, don’t stop compiling. Keep adding to it. A good unsubscribe rate is about .5% or so. Also, keep in mind that the people on your list may not formally unsubscribe. They may just decide to ignore your email. Pretty much the same effect.
2. Write a Good Subject Line
The subject line of your email should intrigue the people on your list. They should be so curious about what you’re sending them (based on the subject line) that they want to open the email. Get things started off on the right foot by grabbing their attention with a good subject line.
3. Make List Segments
People open emails that have relevance to them. That’s where a segmented email list can really improve your email open rate. When you’re working on a newsletter digital marketing campaign, it’s to your benefit to ask why people are on your list in the first place. The difference in your open rate could be large – 39% according to findings by Lyris (as reported by HubSpot.) And it wasn’t just the open rates that improved. People unsubscribed less frequently, too.
A number of ways exist to improve the segmenting of your list. Some MyCity Social favorites include segmenting by:
- Demographics
- Products purchased (Amazon’s great at this!)
- Email frequency (Think: Send emails to people who want to read emails frequently and vice versa for those who don’t)
- Where they are in the world
- Who opens email
Your company might have a specialty or specialties that allow you to segment your lists even further. For example, say you offer sports coaching for basketball players and football players. It is feasible that you might develop eating, exercise, and recovery programs that are separate for each group. With this example, you see that you should segment your list according to what appeals to people.
4. Use Different Words
Some words that people automatically use in some types of newsletter digital marketing campaigns will trigger the spam response from email providers. HubSpot made a list of words that usually trigger the spam response from email providers. If you’re sending emails that feature these words – even innocently – the people on your list may never see your emails: They’ll go straight to spam.
Here are just some of the words that might trigger your readers’ spam filter (in no particular order):
- Free
- Discount
- Income
- Price
- Buy
- Clearance
- Additional income
- Earn per week
- Potential earnings
- Work from home
If you’re concerned about your emails triggering your readers’ spam filter, talk to your rep MyCity Social about it as you develop your marketing plan.
5. Quality Content
If you write content that people want to read and want to share, your email open rates will go up. This relates to segmenting your market. If you know what people want to read, then writing that content should be simple.
Here’s an example. You run a golf lessons website. Your emails should, therefore, deal with topics like “how to better your swing,” “What each club does,” and “The best golf courses in America (or wherever).” If you don’t write content related to golfing, then it’s unlikely that people will open the email.
If you would like to have a professional digital marketer create enticing and attractive newsletters to improve customer retention and conversion, please contact MyCity Social today.
