Improve Open Rate while Reducing Spam and Bounce Rates

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Open rate is one of the primary metrics that marketers use to measure the effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns. After all, the concept behind marketing through emails is about getting more people to open your messages and convert.

When going through your email analytics, it can seem distressing to see that our campaigns are experiencing fewer email opens than they did previously. Although occasional drops can happen, a decrease in open rates from one message to the next could be a major problem that needs investigation.

In this post, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about the open rate and how it relates to both spam rate and bounce rate in our email marketing campaigns.

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What Is Open Rate?

The open rate in email marketing is a measurement indicating the percentage of messages that were opened for a specific campaign. It often shows how well the email was able to grab the reader’s attention, perhaps by using a catchy subject line. It also reveals whether the email reached its designated inbox or was sent straight to the spam folder.

Email open rate is crucial because it is a key indicator in helping monitor the success of an email marketing campaign. It lets you know which areas of your email strategy are effective and which ones need improvement.

Although the email open rate is important, it is most useful when combined with other email marketing measures to determine success, such as the spam rate and bounce rate.

What Is Spam Rate?

The spam rate of an email marketing campaign is the number of times users reported your messages as spam. This is often displayed as a percentage of the total number of emails that were sent.

The industry standard for spam complaint rates, set by popular email service providers like Gmail, is anything below 0.1%. That would be equivalent to 1 spam complaint in every 1,000 messages you send with anything more than that number considered high.

Recipients report emails as spam through the following:

By clicking on the button or link labeled “report spam” or “this is spam” from their inbox. Once they press this button, the report is sent directly to major email service providers.
By clicking on the unsubscribe link in your email and then providing their reason as “spam” upon doing so.

It’s important to keep in mind that not all mailbox providers share the spam complaint rates with their senders. This means that you may have a higher spam complaint rate than you think.

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What Is Bounce Rate?

Besides the spam rates, the bounce rates of an email marketing campaign are another metric that marketers keep a close eye on. This refers to the percentage of emails that “bounced” or did not reach their target inboxes and, thus, had to be returned to the sender.

There are many reasons why an email would experience a bounce. A common reason is that the contact is no longer using the same email account and it has already been deleted by their email service provider.

That is why proper mailing list hygiene is essential since bounce rates can affect your sender reputation and email deliverability. When you have a low email reputation, spam filters tend to focus more on you, which leads to a cycle of non-engagement and potentially being added to a blacklist.

Another common reason for bounced emails is when the mail service provider is under construction, which often happens with email addresses connected to organizations or companies.

The number of reasons why email bounces happen is so plentiful that experts categorized them to make things easier. Today, an email bounce can be categorized as either soft or hard, based on severity.

A soft bounce is when an email experiences temporary delivery failure. It could be that the receiving server is having a short-term problem with their system, the mailbox of the recipient could be full, or the receiving server found the message too large. In most instances, an email address will have at least several soft bounces before it is considered a hard bounce.
A hard bounce is a permanent failure to deliver an email, which could be due to a typographical error with the email address or a non-existent domain.

The industry standard for bounce rates is 2% and going above that point is strictly not advised. If you continue to send to email addresses that have resulted in bounces without taking appropriate action, you will eventually harm your sending reputation and your email deliverability will degrade for all future sends.

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How Can Bounced Emails and Spam Complaints Affect Your Campaigns?

Both spam complaints and bounced emails negatively affect email marketing campaigns in several ways.

Having a high spam complaint will adversely affect your deliverability and can take many months to fix. For most email service providers, accounts with significant spam complaint rates will be notified via email and will be put under review. Emails may or may not be sent at this time until the problem has been resolved.

Continuing to have a high spam complaint rate will put your account at risk of being suspended.

Similarly, high bounce rates are a hindrance to your deliverability since it hurts your sender reputation. These rates normally soar high when marketers fail to ensure that their mailing lists are clean and active. Besides that, errors when entering or importing email addresses could be two more reasons for experiencing increased email bounce rates.

The internet service providers (ISPs) normally set limitations for bounces, abuse, and unsubscribes. Once these rates reach a certain threshold, the ISPs will take drastic actions against email marketers. These actions could be issuing a warning or outright suspending an account.

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7 Tips to Improve Your Open Rate While Reducing Spam and Bounce Rates

Now that we’ve covered why emails are reported as spam or experience bounces, you might be asking yourself how you can improve your open rates while minimizing spam and bounce rates.

It’s important to note that not all aspects of email delivery are under your control. However, there are still many things you can do on your end to ensure you can increase the probability of contacts opening your emails and actually engage with your content.

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Tip #1: Use Attractive Subject Lines

The subject lines you use have a huge impact when talking about email open rates. As a responsible email marketer, one of your jobs is to ensure that you use attractive subject lines so your messages will stand out.

Many organizations have been doing email marketing for many years yet use the same subject line formulas of years past. That’s why many of these commonly used subject lines are filtered by email service providers just like white noise.

To be unique yet effective, you want to be creative with the subject lines you use in your emails. Some tips to consider include:

Enticing curiosity among your recipients. Making people curious enough that they decide to open your messages is good but you want to avoid being overly mysterious.
Include statistics in your subject lines as numbers naturally attract attention among readers.
Use a conversational, fun, or joking tone to lighten up the mood.
Research and speak in the style or tone of your subscribers to easily relate with them.

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Tip #2: Provide Valuable Content

It may seem obvious but providing valuable content in your emails is one of the most overlooked parts of email marketing. Messages that aren’t relevant nor targeted will be seen as messages without value to prospects and customers. Furthermore, spam filters could target your account because of low-quality emails.

That’s why you want to make sure that the messages you send to your contacts actually have content that they want to read. Recipients who find your emails to be irrelevant to their needs could consistently delete them without opening or flagging them as spam. Both actions severely affect your sender reputation.

Additionally, you want to include a clear unsubscribe link in your emails since those without are at risk of being labeled as spam. Keep in mind that individual spam filters change their rules constantly so monitoring and altering campaigns accordingly are important.

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Tip #3: Don’t Use Spam Triggers in Your Copy

Throughout the years, spam filters continue to be more sophisticated in their approach to detecting spam-like content. However, a spam filter isn’t perfect and your emails can still get added to spam folders even if your message is legitimate.

To make the most of your email marketing campaigns, you want to do everything in your power to prevent being flagged as spam.

Here are several best practices you should follow to avoid triggering spam filters:

Avoid using sales-like language such as “buy,” “cash,” “discount,” and “clearance” in your emails
You want to make sure that your recipients have all opted to your mailing list
Use a reputable IP address when sending your email campaign
Send your emails using a verified domain
Ensure you use clean code in your messages
Never use the illegal bait-and-switch tactic to deceive your contacts
Make sure your subscribers can easily opt-out of your emails at any time

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Tip #4: Use Personalization

When drafting subject lines and email content, it’s only natural to think of the hundreds to thousands of users who are about to receive your messages. However, writing your emails as if you’re speaking to a single person is far more effective. This means personalizing not only your subject line but also your message.

To start writing this way, you should already have identified your ideal customer or client persona. You need to know their pain points, wants, preferences, values, and the things they dislike.

If you find yourself stuck at this stage, you can send an email requesting a five-minute chat with your contacts. During the conversation, ask them questions that will let you learn and understand the needs of your subscribers.

Taking your time to know your contacts will be extremely helpful with how you format your messaging as well as improving your offerings.

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Tip #5: Segment Your Campaigns

Relevance is one of the most vital factors that determine whether or not users will choose to open your emails. One of the best ways you can improve the relevancy of your messages is by segmenting your campaigns.

Start the segmentation process by incorporating tags to each of your subscribers based on their behavior. For instance, tagging someone according to their purchase behavior means that you’ll send different emails to all those within that specific category separate from the rest.

It’s even possible to segment your contacts and send them emails based on the products that they recently bought. Demographics and interests are also common categories that email marketers use in segmentation.

Once your segments are in place, writing subject lines and messages becomes so much easier to do. It will also help you increase your open rates while making your email content more engaging.

As a side note, you want to ensure that your subscribers have all been obtained organically. You want to avoid using paid lists since the relevance of your email marketing campaigns can go down when people haven’t opted for your emails on their own.

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Tip #6: Create Onboarding Campaigns to Increase User Engagement

Converting your visitors into email subscribers is quite straightforward: you simply need to provide engaging content that is relevant to their needs. But if you want to make them loyal advocates of your brand, you want to provide more value than what you currently offer. An excellent way of doing this is by adding an effective onboarding campaign.

Smart businesses know that having an engaging email sequence is a great way of converting prospects into paying customers. With a good onboarding campaign, you can increase email engagement while letting you gain important insights on your subscribers.

Additionally, a well-made email onboarding campaign can give out a powerful first impression to each of your new leads. Greeting each prospect after signing up to your mailing list shows that you’re committed to developing a long-term relationship with them that isn’t primarily transactional.

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Tip #7: Cater to Mobile Users

Finally, you want to make sure that you’re catering to people who are using mobile devices to access their emails. This is especially true since more and more individuals are now consuming content on their smartphones.

That’s why you need to make your email marketing campaigns mobile-friendly by incorporating loadable media and responsive formats. You should also think about mobile screens to typically have a smaller view, which makes lengthy subject lines ineffective.

Besides keeping subject lines brief, some more tips that can help make your campaigns more ideal for mobile users include:

Use simple formatting by incorporating single-column or under 600px wide in your emails
Use bigger fonts since smaller ones can be hard to read on mobile
Assume that your images won’t be displayed, so make sure your emails will still be viable without them
Avoid overdoing your link building so your contacts won’t access the wrong URL by accident
Your call-to-action button should be easily seen by your subscribers
Optimize your images to reduce loading times

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The Takeaway

Knowing the open rate of your email campaigns is extremely important because it shows how effective your email marketing efforts have been. Two of the most crucial metrics that tie directly to your open rates are the spam complaint rates and bounce rates of your emails.

Email marketers need to constantly monitor these two metrics as they can significantly hamper email deliverability and reduce sender reputation. Failing to address these issues will ultimately lead to your account being added to blacklists.

By following the tips provided in this post, you should be able to improve your open rates while minimizing both spam complaints and bounced emails that you experience.

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We offer tools and features to help you monitor your emails and reduce negative rates and boost open and click rates.

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Email Deliverability, Email Marketing, open rate, spam rate