The first thing that should be on your mind when creating an email marketing campaign is how to improve your open rate.

Can you imagine if Moses climbed the mountain and came down without the tablets? That’s what it’s like when your emails don’t get opened, and customers walk away without having taken any value from your content. You can’t convert the customers you’re not reaching!

Your email open rate is calculated by dividing the number of successful emails by the number of emails that are opened. Since emails will inevitably be bounced back, it is not helpful to divide by the number of email addresses you delivered to—doing so will lower your rate and confuse your metrics.

An email is marked as read when a tracking pixel is activated or a segment of your email is opened beyond being in preview. Some email servers will scan your email for harmful content before they are delivered to your addressee’s inbox and may trigger an “email opened” confirmation where human eyes saw no such email. Because of this, it is crucial to examine both your open rate and your click-through rate, which will be the subject of another blog.

Email marketing campaigns have been the heart of B2B marketing for over twenty years, yet many marketers are unfamiliar with their metrics or ways to improve them. Despite how reluctant many marketers are to improve their strategies, the possible improvements are quite simple!

Today’s blog will discuss a few strategies you can implement today to improve your email open rates.

Send at an Optimal Time

After one hour, the open rate of emails drops to less than 1%, so getting your message read immediately after sending is the name of the game. Statistically, the highest amount of emails are opened after someone gets settled into their office around 10 AM or after lunch around 1-2 PM. Compound this with Tuesday as the optimal date for launching your email campaign, and you’ve found a window that could boost your open rate by up to 3.75% compared to other days.

That might not sound like much, but it adds up—when you’re sending 100,000 emails, that means an extra 3750 people seeing your content!

A 6-10 Word Subject Line

With more mobile devices being used for emails and networking, the ideal character limit for strong email subject lines have become shorter over time. At present, 6-10 word subject lines are the sweet spot.

Any shorter and it’s challenging to communicate value, but any longer, and your message is cut off and less effective.

To make these words count, try integrating lyrics, pop culture references, or personalized messaging whenever possible. You want to be to the point, relevant, and strong with your messaging. Bonus tip: Feeling stuck? I offer cold email marketing templates and copy!

Segment Your Marketing List

Just like YouTube doesn’t show you ads for children’s cartoons, a good email marketing campaign understands its audience to ensure the content is high-value for readers. When you blast away without considering that your audience has different pains and wants out of your brand, you risk alienating portions of your customer base every time you send out a singular campaign.

Segmenting your list means taking existing demographic data and making deliberate choices about how to divide it up for maximum messaging impact. Despite this simple process improving open rates dramatically, 89% of businesses fail to do it!

An example would be creating segmented lists out of your client database that separates based on organizational size. You could market your smaller budget services or special rates on brand overhauls for small businesses or startups. For larger companies, you could pitch your consulting or outsourcing options.

In the first group, you will achieve higher success since the scope of an overhaul would be much easier in a small organization than in a company with multiple offices nationwide. Likewise, a small business would have little need for a full-time consultant, but a large company might—and would be more likely to have the budget.

Send From a Non-Generic Email

As a final tip, consider sending emails from a personalized email rather than a generic handle. This simple swap is a huge savings opportunity that many people overlook. A personalized sender address could improve your open rate by up to 35%.

It’s no surprise that everyone is drowning in emails, seeing as an estimated 306.4 billion emails are sent every day. Adding a human touch to your campaign hints that it is a person trying to reach out, not a piece of automation.

Finding the balance between personality and machine efficiency is the hurdle that all email marketers face. Once you’ve got the hang of it (maybe with the help of these tips), you’ll see results in not only your open rates but your click-through and conversion as well.

Beyond the missed sales opportunities, there are other downsides to having a low open rate. Your email provider could flag you as spam, for starters, which means you could either end up in the trash bin from the start or be blocked from sending emails entirely.

Navigating these marketing spaces, improving your marketing reach, and driving conversion is what Megan Killion Consulting is all about. I’d love to get started with you on your next strategy and begin working on content that converts. Get in touch, and together we’ll keep you out of the spam and into the glam. marketing emails opened.