Email marketing is an important digital marketing pillar. It is a great way to build relationships with customers and drive traffic and sales. However, email marketing is only effective if people open and read the emails you send, which is what most people struggle with.

An email open rate is the percentage of subscribers who open an email campaign. According to Mailchimp, the average email open rate is 21.33%, for all industries. A higher email open rate indicates that your subscribers engage with your content and are more likely to take action on your call-to-action (CTA).

The average person receives around 121 emails per day, inbox overwhelm is real. If you want to stand out in the sea of emails in your audience’s inbox, continue reading. Here are 10 ways to increase email open rate

10 ways to increase email open rate

1. Trigger curiosity

2. Optimize subject line

3. Avoid spam filters

4. Personalize your emails

5. Segment your email list

6. Schedule emails for the right time

7. Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly

8. Keep your email list fresh

9. Use humor

10. Use images and videos

1. Trigger Curiosity

Your email list is a group of people who are interested in your offerings, which means you have a captive audience. But even with a captive audience, you need to work to keep your readers engaged. One way to increase email open rate is by triggering the audience’s curiosity with your emails. Your emails should be crafted in a way that sparks the reader's curiosity and encourages them to learn more about your product or service.

When people are curious, they're more likely to open and engage with your email. You can do this by asking questions in your subject line, using images and videos that pique people's curiosity, and writing intriguing copy with cliffhangers or intriguing facts and statistics. This will intrigue readers, making them want to know more.

2. Optimize Subject Line

The subject line is the most important element of an email. It is the first thing your audience will see and decide if the email is worth opening or not. If your subject line fails to spark enough interest, your email will never be opened. You need to make sure that your email's subject line is interesting, catches the reader's attention, and triggers curiosity in your email's recipients.

So how do you write a subject line that catches the reader’s eye and gets your email opened? Here’s how; use powerful words that create a sense of urgency, make a bold promise, ask a provocative question, or tease a new product or service. By following these tips, you can write subject lines that will give you a higher email click-through rate.

3. Avoid Spam Filters

To increase email open rate, avoiding spam filters is important. While they help people avoid a lot of unwanted messages, they might make it harder for you to reach your audience. There are ways to find your way around spam filters. Make the purpose of your email clear and make sure that it is reflected in the email content. Only send the subscribers something relevant, and also give them the option to unsubscribe at the email footer.

Use relevant subject lines like "New Product!" to promote a new product or service. Spam filters look for certain words or phrases and flag them as spam. Avoid words like "free" "instant" "order now" or "free trial" in both the subject line and content of the email. Instead, use "cheap" "discount" or "get yours today".

4. Personalize Your Emails

Personalization can increase email click-through rate by as much as 20%, it helps you connect with your audience on a deeper level. You can do this by learning about your subscribers and then tailoring your emails to make them relevant and engaging. You can use data from previous customer interactions, like their response to your previous emails or products.

Some ways to personalize emails are using first names and personalized subject lines. Also, you can send reminder emails to subscribers who never check emails after subscribing and welcome emails to new subscribers. You can also do this by segmenting your list on criteria like location or behavior, and then customizing emails according to each category. This brings us to the next section.

5. Segment Your Email List

Segmenting is dividing your email list into different groups based on their interests or needs. It will help you target different groups of people with specific and relevant content which is most likely to attract them. This will result in a higher email click-through rate and better engagement with your brand. The more relevant you are to your readers, the more likely they are to open your email.

The key is to send targeted emails that are relevant to your reader's interests. Sending out a lot of emails on the same topic defeats this purpose. Segmentation requires studying consumer behavior. Like if you sell shoes, targeting people who have purchased sneakers in the past year can get you more results and leads. You can segment your list by age, location, interest, or any other factor that makes sense for the content of your emails.

6. Schedule Emails for the Right Time

Sending emails at the right time is important to increase the email open rate. sending emails at the right time can improve click to open rate by up to 30%. The right time to send an email is not when you think it's the right time. It's when people are most receptive to your message—when they are online, check their inboxes, and are the most attentive.

Sending emails at the wrong time will not grab the audience's attention, will be forgotten, or ignored, and will not have much impact. You can use predictive analytics to find out the times of day people typically open their inboxes, and more. Or you can track user behavior in real-time to know how many people are reading your emails at different times of the day. Schedule your emails at the time when most people are likely to open your emails.

7. Make Sure Your Emails are Mobile-friendly

Google says that mobile users check their email inboxes 3x more than desktop users. Most people today use mobile to check their emails, so if your marketing emails are not mobile friendly you are ignoring most of your audience. If your emails are not optimized for mobile screens, mobile users will not open them or read them.

Mobile-friendly emails are easily readable on mobile screens and have a higher click-through rate than traditional emails. Mobile screens are smaller, so the best way to make your email mobile-friendly is to use short sentences and paragraphs, using bullet points, and include links. Don’t make the text too long and large so that people can easily read it without zooming in or scrolling down.

8. Keep Your Email List Fresh

Over time some of your subscribers may stop reading emails from you, change their email addresses, or may not be interested in your brand anymore. Because of these inactive subscribers, your email open rate will appear low. This is why maintaining an up-to-date email list is important to improve click to open rate.

Having inactive subscribers can also make your emails appear spammy to inboxes, reducing the open rate even more. So, cleanse your email list by removing subscribers that have been inactive for months and keep your email list fresh. But don’t forget to send one last email to win back the inactive subscribers. 

9. Use Humour

Boring and overly serious emails will bore your audience out, and that is the last thing you want. That’s why you should humor to your advantage. Humor is a great way to grab your audience's attention, hence, can have a positive impact on your email open rate. Adding humor to your emails is a more personalized and creative approach to reaching out to your audience.

It can help you connect with your audience on a more personal level. Adding a little humor to your emails can make them stand out in the crowd inboxes of your audience and make them more memorable. The readers will remember what they read for a longer time.

10. Use Images and Videos

You can also increase your email open rate with some visual aid. Visual content like images and videos are more easily consumable and more engaging as well. Therefore they can significantly improve the email open rate.

You can use a diagram, chart, infographic, video tutorial, or any other type of visual that goes well with the content and purpose of your email. Mention in the subject line that the email contains an infographic, chart, or the kind of visual you have used and it will improve the click-to-open rate 

Conclusion

Effective email marketing is important for the successful marketing of your business. If your marketing emails are suffering from a low open rate, your business is getting a serious blow. Improve your email marketing strategy by following these ways to increase your email open rate.