Effective Email Marketing Strategy: 3 Tips to Boost Your Open Rate

Email marketing is an important and effective way to build an “owned” audience - one that includes the most loyal and engaged contacts.

It’s one of the best ways to directly target a specific audience and put strategically planned messages in one of the most checked digital spaces: people’s inboxes.

It’s also known to be a low-cost way to boost conversions and revenue by providing email subscribers with the information, perks and value they’re looking for.

So how do you make the most of your precious email data and make the most of this marketing tactic?

Read on to find out! Plus, get one of my BEST tips to boost your open rate by 10%!!

Why Do Email Marketing?

Email marketing can be an effective way to reach a large audience at a relatively low cost, as long as the emails are targeted and relevant to the recipient.

In fact, 99% of consumers check their email every day.

Email marketing can be one of the best ways to deliver personalized, exclusive content to select audiences. It’s my favourite way to offer special perks and rewards only reserved for the most loyal followers and fans - the ones who joined your subscriber list.

Yet, the average marketing email campaign typically only achieves an average open rate around 21% and a click-through rate of 2.5%.

With low open rates and low click through rates some brands begin to wonder whether it’s even worth it to do email campaigns.

However, email marketing is not only incredibly cost effective, but there are ways to increase your open rate and click-through rate well above the average to see the greatest rewards for your efforts.

Below are 3 of my best tips to maximize an effective email marketing strategy, plus at the end I share the steps I take to build out my own email strategies for my clients.

Email Marketing Tip #1: Deliver Value in the Subject Line

The subject line of your email campaigns are the single most important line of text you write - it determines whether someone will open your email or delete it. The subject lines that are opened the most often are the ones that clearly communicate and promise value.

Value can mean different things to different businesses, but usually a valuable offer includes one or more of these things:

• First or exclusive access

• Discounts or rewards

• Giveaways

• Unique or shocking information

• Personal stories or human interest

Here are some examples of subject lines that deliver value:

• 🎉WIN a FREE stay & see our new rooms

• Be the 1st to try our new flavour!

• Hear THIS behind-the-scenes creation story

Email Marketing Tip #2: Preview Your Subject Line

No…I don’t just mean look at your subject line in the email software provider you're using.

You absolutely need to preview exactly how your subject line reads across different devices, and luckily there are free ways to do this so easily.

The two most common issues I come across when I work on optimizing a client’s email marketing strategy are:

• Subject lines that bury the lead and value

• Subject lines that are too long

I now write and finalize my email marketing subject lines directly in a preview generator to know I’ve written the best subject line that fits the character count.

You can instantly see if your subject line fits the character count and experience what it’s like receiving the email.

Email Marketing Tip #3: Resend to Non Openers

Now THIS is my ultimate secret sauce hackerooni to increasing your open rate, usually by 10%.

Here’s what you do.

1. Step 1: Send your optimized email campaign out

2. Step 2: Wait 48 hours

3. Step 3: Resend the exact same email campaign to non-openers using a different subject line and preview text.

The assumption is that if someone hasn’t opened your email in 48 hours they probably aren’t going to. They also likely didn’t see or read your original email or campaign.

Maybe they were on vacation, or maybe your original subject line just didn’t do it for them. Maybe they did open the email but likely didn’t take action.

So, let’s resend!

You worked hard on your first campaign and it deserves to be seen. Just simply hit re-send with your new subject line and voila - more openers to add to your analytics - not to mention hopefully more sales!