There are several ways to measure the success of your marketing emails - leads, sales, etc. But, you can't get to those outcomes without people opening your marketing emails.
On average, we like to see marketing email open rates at or above 20%. But, once you've established your own baseline open rate, there are several ways to improve it and set your marketing emails up for success.
As we go through these best practices remember that real people are who open your emails, so don't try to trick them into opening or pull a bait and switch with your message. Once you break trust with them, it's really hard to get them reengaged. So, instead, use your marketing emails as building blocks to a long term relationship.
Optimize your subject line and preview text. These two areas are the first thing the reader will see. You want to make sure they are clear, concise, and set the stage for what they can expect to find within the email itself. To optimize these elements start by writing out a couple of options and running a few A/B tests to see what works best with your audience. You can also ask generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, to provide some alternatives to what you've written.
Review your "from name" and "from email address". People open emails from people and organizations that they know, so it's important to be consistent and use a "from name" and "from email address" that properly represents your company. For example, if you subscribe to our email newsletter (see the bottom of this page to sign-up), you'll get emails from me, Kellie Crawford. But, if you get an email from a retailer like Target, it would seem odd to receive a marketing email from a specific person, so, instead, Target sends their emails from the Target info@target.com.
Send your emails when your audience is likely to be checking their email. You want your emails to be towards the top when people are actually checking their emails, so send your emails during the day and when they're likely not busy at work. Consider lunch hours, evenings, and weekends. Plus, most of your opens will happen within the first 24 hours.
Segment your list into smaller groups so the message is more relevant. If you lump your entire list into one big group, your message needs to be pretty high-level in order to be relevant to everyone. By segmenting your list into smaller groups you can make your message more granular to that niche. Think quality over quantity.
Be prepared to do several rounds of testing and learning as you continue to make improvements. But, as long as you keep the customer's perspective in mind, you should be alright.
If you need additional guidance and help, we're here to help you with your email marketing.
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