Reasons Your Open Rate Is Low and Strategies to Boost It

A low email open rate is one of the problems in email marketing you may need to deal with every day. You have looked into every detail of your campaign, put efforts into creating an engaging subject line, put forward an exclusive offer in your email, but your open rate is still headed south? After so many efforts put you expect your subscribers to read your emails, but they don’t, or only a very few of them do? Don’t fret, you are not alone. Every business sooner or later stumbles across this problem, but thankfully, email marketing is always evolving, and solutions to pretty much every problem are found. Reasons, why your open rate is low, are numerous, and below are the ones that bring the most damage.

1 — Wrong subject line

When I say wrong I mean a few things: 1) your subject line is too long 2) it doesn’t appeal to your subscribers, i.e. it doesn’t disclose the contents of your email and doesn’t solve your subscribers’ problem 3) you used spam trigger words in your subject line.

2 — Irrelevant content

If your open rate stays low for a prolonged time, it’s time to think whether you are sending your campaigns to the right audience, it’s probably just the time to start segmenting your email list.

3 — Your emails fail to render properly on mobile devices

Although many businesses nowadays tackle this problem even at the earliest stages of their business development, many still miss this step, mostly because this functionality aspect is usually left for later times to deal with. Making sure the content of your email is transmitted properly is particularly important. After all, who wants to read an email that looks like a total mess?

4 — Time emails are sent

The last and no less important reason why your email rate is low is the time you send them out. If you send your emails during holidays or in the nighttime, chances are they will get lost in the myriad of other emails your subscribers get per day. Consider it like having breakfast at night. Who wants to eat an omelet at 6 pm?

As you can see, a low email open rate can substantially damage your business. We have looked at the most striking reasons that are keeping your open rate low. Now let’s look at some strategies that will actually improve your open rate.

1 — Segment your list

A very common mistake many inexperienced marketers commit is they send generic emails to all their subscribers. In the ideal world, this would have been a dream marketing strategy…if it had been effective. But it is not. Using the “one size fits all” approach no longer works in email marketing. The point here is that people are more likely to open and engage with content that is more relevant to them. According to Mailchimp, segmented email campaigns achieve 14.31% higher open rates than non-segmented email campaigns. Segment your subscribers by job title, location, time on your email list, average order value, type of products ordered and you will see a significant rise in your email open rate.

People are more likely to open and engage with content that is more relevant to them

2 — Show your subscribers the value your emails will bring

Each and every of your campaigns has to start with the question “What is in my email that subscribers will find useful?” If you never ask yourself this question, what’s the point of your email campaign then? Your email has to deliver tangible value, something your subscriber will make use of. And this value must be presented in your subject line. If it’s a B2C setting, send your subscribers a birthday offer, notify them about your offers. In a B2B situation, send your prospects useful how-to articles and/or case studies.

3 — Personalize your emails…

…and by “personalize” I mean not only adding your subscriber’s name in the subject line. Personalizing is also about demonstrating your subscribers that you want to nurture your relationship with them. Send your subscribers emails that are based on their recent activity or inactivity (f.e. thank big spenders, offer a discount to customers who only buy on sale, send a “we-miss-you” email to leads that have been inactive for a long time).

4 — Don’t let your emails go to SPAM

According to SpamLaws, 14.5 billion spam emails are sent every day. Let me guess, you don’t want to be a part of that number. There are many reasons why your emails land in your subscribers’ SPAM folders. One of them is your subject line includes SPAM trigger words. Using employment words like Earn Cash, Work From Home, Online Degree, or finance-related words like Money-back, No Cost, Fast Cash, No Credit Check, Lowest Interest Rate, or marketing phrases like Best Price, Increase Traffic, Sale, 50% off, No Strings Attached will trigger your email to land in SPAM. Check this HubSpot list of email spam trigger words and phrases to make sure your subject line is free of anything that may drag your open rate down.

5 — Give your email list a big clean-up

Using an age-old email list to send your campaign to is not the best idea. In fact, you are losing a certain percentage of subscribers year over year. People unsubscribe, they stop checking old email addresses, your emails don’t reach the right audience and all your campaign efforts turn out to be in vain. Cleaning your email list once in a while will result in reduced bounce rates and better deliverability rates which in turn will improve your sender reputation.

Cleaning your email list once in a while will result in reduced bounce rates and better deliverability rates which in turn will improve your sender reputation

For email list cleanup I recommend Mailcheck — an email validation service that will clean up your list from fake emails. It can be used as a standalone application to upload your email list for validation, or it can also be integrated with your platform to validate emails from the point potential customers want to subscribe to your newsletter.

As you can see, there are multiple ways to increase your email open rate and improve the way you engage with your subscribers. It’s all about putting some efforts into detecting what’s bringing your open rate down and exploring the strategies that can boost it.