6 tips to high email open rates (not subject lines)

When it comes to email marketing, the most common question I get is “How do I get high email open rates?”

Here are 6 tips:

1/ Give subscribers the right expectations

Are you going to send emails on a daily/weekly/monthly basis?

Make sure your readers know what they're getting into.

On my opt-in form, I mention explicitly they’re going to get daily emails.

This notice eliminates any surprise — the subscriber doesn’t feel bombarded with my daily emails. If they don’t want daily emails, they wouldn’t have subscribed.

In fact, now they’re actually expecting daily emails from me.

Expectation = higher email opens (if you’re interesting and beneficial to them).

2/ Provide value to readers (not yourself)

How many times have you opted in to someone’s list, only to get spammed with sales emails every day?

It doesn’t take long to realize when an author doesn't care about your well-being. They only care about your wallet.

Send value-packed emails that are beneficial to their lives. Give tips to help solve their problems. Expect nothing in return. This kind of mindset, over the long term, will make them appreciate and respect you.

3/ Make your emails fun (and interesting)

Most emails are boring. Don’t believe it?

Go take a look at your inbox and I’d bet you can count with fingers how many are interesting.

Boring = no one opens your emails.

Don’t just provide value.

Stand out from the crowd. And a great way to do that is to ENTERTAIN your subscribers and make your emails fun. So they look forward to opening them.

Stories are a good way to entertain and they don't have to be long.

E.g. I want to let readers know they shouldn't be "flying bind" in business. That they should know their metrics.

4/ Your from name

I still see people representing businesses yet using their personal name as the “from name” when sending out emails.

A from name is the name you use when sending emails.

I have no clue who these guys are. But when I opened their emails, they turned out to be employees of businesses that I recognize and have previously engaged with.

Unless you’re using your personal name as the “storefront” of your business, use this combination:

[First name] at [Brand]

E.g.

Welly at BirdSend

(ohhh and don’t just use [Brand] because it sound so “corporate-sy” — people don’t open emails from corporations, they open emails from other humans)

5/ Your from email address

Never use a free email address to send out emails.

If you’re using a free from email address to send out emails, your emails are more likely to end up in the spam folder.

Why? Because anyone (including spammers) can get their hands on a free email address effortlessly. This means inbox providers can’t verify who the sender is — whether they’re a spammer or legit person.

Rather than taking risks, they’ll just mark your emails as spam.

You should instead use an email address from your domain to send out emails. Not only will it go well with spam filters, you’ll also look more professional in the eyes of your subscribers.

E.g.

kimberly [at] salesupnow [dot] com
VS
kimberly [at] gmail [dot] com

6/ Good email service provider (ESP)

An ESP’s job is to deliver your emails to the intended recipients’ inbox.

Not the spam/bulk folder, but the inbox — we call this “inbox placement”.

Not one single ESP (even the biggest ones) can deliver emails to the inbox 100% of the time. What you want to make sure is the majority of your emails do not land in spam.

If you’re sending high volume emails (more than 50k/week), you could install SPF and DKIM records into your domain host to boost your results.

Wrapping up

Do these to improve your email open rates:

1. Give subscribers the right expectations
2. Be beneficial to your subscribers (not to yourself)
3. Make your emails fun (and interesting)
4. Use [first name] + [brand] as your from name
5. Use your own domain for your from email address
6. Use a good ESP

Wait there's more...

Most people would immediately think about subject lines when it comes to improving their email open rates.

However as you’ve learned above, it’s not the only way.

In the next post I'll cover the 7 types of irresistible subject lines you can use to boost your open rates further.

Hope this is useful for you 🙏

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