How to Improve Email Open and Click rates
Last Updated on June 12, 2023 by Daniel Stenabaugh
Today I want to talk about the best way to improve email open and click rates. The deliverability of emails is dependent on the reputation of the email marketer. You can send all the email you like, but if no one is opening them, then nothing will improve. And open rates and revenues will depend on the reputation you have with your subscribers.
If your open rates have been low, your subscribers do not find your content to be useful in solving their most pressing concerns. In other words, your reputation is not up to par. That may sound harsh. But the sooner you understand why your viewers are not opening your emails and e-newsletters, the sooner you can make the changes needed to improve.
How do you improve your reputation?
It is important to understand what is at stake here. We are NOT talking about your business reputation per se. You may be the best remodeler in the county. Your work product is exceptional. Your crews are well-trained, courteous, and dependable.
You pride yourself on completing projects on time and on budget. And your customers appreciate everything you do for them.
This is not the issue.
The problem arises when your customers read your current email posts or e-newsletters. It comes down to creating excellent content.
Are you putting as much time into your e-communications as you do in your job performance? You need to understand that every email that reaches your subscribers’ inbox should be extremely high quality. These communications must be of the same high quality as your work if you want your readers to open them.
Again, we are talking about reputation in a communications sense.
But I don’t have the time.
You may think that the amount of time and effort you put into your e-communications is not worth the effort. And this can seem especially true if your subscriber list is small.
But you need to ask yourself what would happen if you took the same attitude about a small job you did for a new customer. It may not have been very profitable, but you know the importance of treating every project with the utmost care. Even though the job was small you always do your best you can. Repeatedly a small job yesterday turned into a large job today. Your clients’ circumstances changed, their income improved, and they knew you were the contractor who didn’t cut corners. They respected your integrity and came back to you later with a larger job.
The same holds true with online communications. Look here for more ways to improve communications with your customers.
Your customers receive dozens of emails every day. In fact, according to Campaign Monitor, the average person receives approximately 125 emails every day. The time they have to open and click through is very much dependent on the quality of the reputation of the sender and the quality of the content in the email.
When you spend the time creating high quality e-content, your subscribers will feel confident that your email is worth reading. And the better the content, the more likely it will get read. More readership means more opens and more opens lead to more clicks. And more clicks lead to more business.
Customers are online more than you realize.
When I was managing my own remodeling business, I was in the field much of the day. It wasn’t uncommon to be driving over one hundred miles each day to check in on ongoing projects. I wasn’t sitting in my office in front of the computer. I didn’t realize how much time my customers were spending online. According to a 2018 survey by Adobe they found that a typical employee spends 3.1 hours per day on work email and 2.5 hours per weekday on personal email. That’s a lot of time online.
With more people working from home every year the lines between work and personal life are becoming increasingly blurred. Shoppers are online all day long. They have more time to search and browse than ever before. And they have become exceptionally good at it. When an email message pops up in their inbox, they make a quick decision about the value it has for them.
Let’s talk about emails
An email is information that the subscriber wants to receive. It is information about their interests, hobbies, passions and personal communication from family and friends. An email is something in their private inbox. It is their private world and they either invite you in or they don’t. It’s their choice who comes into their private world.
If you are charging in with a message that doesn’t resonate with their interest, and passions, they will reject your offer out of hand. You will be seen as an uninvited guest and your information can end up in the spam folder.
Big flashy headlines and uninteresting content will turn them off as sure as a loud salesman at the used car lot.
Companies look at open and click rates as a measure of success and ignore the reason these rates are so low. They conclude that email doesn’t work because the numbers are low. In fact, the numbers are low because email is not appropriate for the intended audience.
How to draft better email.
Today, to reach subscribers your email should have a personal tone. It needs to reach people where they live. Most inboxes are very personal.
Blasting into a customer’s inbox with a loud, boisterous message is not going to make the grade.
It is no wonder that only 14% of emails get opened and more than 25% of customers unsubscribe every year.
Final thoughts
If you want to improve the open and click through rates in your email campaign, consider how you approach your subscribers. Are you writing in a way that encourages your readers to invite you into their private world or are you turning them away with flashy headlines and noisy text?
If you write content that speaks to your subscribers’ interests in a way that is personal and shows respect for their personal space, you will see a marked increase in your email marketing success.
If you have any questions about this post or any other web content related topic, please leave a comment below.
You can also reach me via email at dan@theconstructionindustrycopywriter.com