Did you know that the typical open rate for marketing emails is less than 20%? And that it can go as low as 10%? Yikes. That’s not great news for marketers everywhere because newsletters are still one of the most effective ways to build and maintain relationships with your customers. In fact, nearly 90% of customers prefer to receive promotional and marketing emails from brands they follow. The trick is creating newsletters your recipients actually want to read and respond to.
Your success with newsletters largely comes down to how well you understand your audience and what they like best about your brand or product. If you’re struggling with this challenge, we’ve got some helpful ideas on how to improve your newsletter campaigns so that you see a higher response rate next time around.
Best Practices to Boost Your Open Rate
Create a captative subject line
Every part of your newsletter matters, but the subject line will either hook or turn off your readers. If you can’t grab your readers’ attention with a compelling headline, you’ll have a much harder time getting them to click through and read the rest of your message. But if you nail the headline, you’ll greatly increase the odds that your readers will actually open your emails.
When you’re creating this headline, you want to make sure that it sticks out from the rest of the noise in your subscribers’ inboxes. Stay away from generic headlines like “Our new product line is out!” or “Our team has something to share with you!” Those are great for a company newsletter, but you want your readers to feel like they’re getting a one-on-one experience with your brand.
Find out what are the best times to send your campaigns
If you regularly send promotional emails to your list, then you probably know that timing is everything. There’s nothing worse than finding a shiny new email in your inbox on a Friday afternoon when everyone wants to start the weekend as soon as possible. If you’re on a particular tight schedule, you definitely want to avoid sending emails at the wrong time. So, find out when your subscribers usually receive emails from your brand.
Segment your contact lists
People don’t fall into one general bucket when it comes to preferences and interests. So, even if you have a large email list, you’re only going to be successful with a small portion of it. To figure out which groups respond best to your campaigns, segment your contact lists into different categories. This will allow you to send personalized email campaigns to each specific subset.
This isn’t something you can do manually, but you can easily do with email marketing platforms like Hubspot or Mailchimp. For example, segment your list based on their purchase history, interests, and the type of device they use to access email. Segmentation not only helps you tailor your campaigns better, but it also allows you to serve different types of content to each group.
Use email personalization
Let’s say you’re sending a campaign to your subscribers about a new winter jacket and another campaign to your subscribers about sunscreen. If you use personalized marketing that mentions the recipients’ specific interests, demands, or needs, you’ll have a much better chance of turning them into customers. Email personalization can take a lot of different forms, and you should use the tools at your disposal to do it. For example, you can use merge tags in your email marketing platform to mention the recipient’s first name, position title, or company name in your message. You can also use conditional logic to serve different content to different users.
Write excellent email copy
It might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to remember that the best newsletters are always well-written. If you constantly use jargon that your readers don’t understand, or you ramble on too long, you won’t get any response from your efforts. Keep your newsletters short and to the point. Don’t try to squeeze everything about your brand or product into one single email. Instead, send a series of short, easy-to-read emails that will keep your recipients’ attention. Be sure to include a call to action in every email you send. It might be something as simple as “Visit our website to learn more” or as complex as “Use coupon code ‘COUPONCODE’ to save money on your next purchase.”
Newsletter campaigns can be a great way to keep your customers and potential customers informed. However, they will only be effective if you spend time building a strong relationship with your audience before you start sending them emails. These are great ways to improve your newsletters, but they’re not the only ways. If you have other helpful ideas, be sure to share them in the comments below.
