Improving email open rates

As we've already discussed, open rates aren't necessarily the best indicator of a successful email campaign. However, they are still important, so here are some tips on improving your open rates, which of course can lead to higher click-through rates!

Optimise the "from name"

With the ever increasing impact of spam and phishing scams, making sure your recipients can clearly identify the sender of your emails is very important. Unless your customers have relationships with your sales people, we wouldn't advise personalising the from name with a salesperson's name that they may not recognise.

Also, don't use a brand name, or product name that your recipients may not be familiar with. It is best to simply state your company's name clearly: Digital Dialogue. Recipients should be able to quickly identify and recognise your company by the from name of your emails.

Testing subject lines

The subject line is the first things your recipients will see - so never underestimate it's importance. Most email platforms will give you the ability to do random split list testing, or A/B testing which will enable you to see what type of subject lines perform best over time.

Maximising the preview pane

Whilst a passing glance at your email in the preview pane may be considered an "open" in your email campaign reports, if your recpients never look any further, that glance isn't going to lead to a click-through. That's why you should optimise this area of your email to compel the reader to open the email and read more. Placing your call to action or most compelling offer in this area of the email may significantly improve your campaign statistics. You should also pay attention to how your email will look with images disabled, and design it accordingly - making sure your call to action is still prevalent.

Check your content for spam compliance

Making sure your content doesn't cause your email to get caught in spam filters is obvious and essential. Some of our email systems provide the ability for you to test your content prior to sending - for more information on this, please give us a call.

Keep your list clean

A list that is not well maintained will drag your campaign stats down, but even worse, it could effect your deliverability. An email sender's reputation is a critical factor in whether your email is delivered to the inbox, bulked, or bounced. Repeatedly sending to bad email addresses will negatively impact your sender reputation. We recommend automatically removing hard bounces from your list after the first bounce, and removing soft bounces after three unsuccessful attempts.