The Dynamic Email Marketing Series Part 2: Optimize Email Open Rates

I was looking through the mail at our house the other day and found an envelope addressed to me. My birthday isn’t for another week, so I was curious what it was for. Giddily, I tore into it wondering who would be sending snail mail in 2017 - aside from my mother and aunts, of course.

Mr. McGinnis, you’ve been selected to receive our platinum card …

I’ve been duped. Nothing more than junk mail cleverly disguised as a handwritten note. I tore it up and started to toss it in the trash, but then I stopped and thought about what just happened.

How in the world did this junk mail get me to open it?

I un-crumpled the letter and looked closely at the envelope. Everything was handwritten. No, not a handwritten-looking font. Someone went through and painstakingly addressed and stamped each of these mailers. It must have cost a small fortune. My name and address, the return address in the right corner, it even had a legit bald eagle postage stamp.

I was impressed. That credit card company had done a great job at getting tricking me into opening their mailer. Where they failed, however, was delivering on what I was expecting to be inside.

This post is all about how to optimize email open rates along with some tactics for improving them. This is part two of a four-part series on email marketing.

Here’s a quick recap of each post in the series.

• Capture – you’ll need email addresses and associated contact information so you can segment your mailing lists. Read it here.
• Open – this step is all about ways to improve your open rates. (That’s this one!)
• Click – now that your email has been opened, you need the recipient to click. Read it here.
• Convert – the final step is optimizing your landing page so users convert. Read it here.

Before I go any further, please be a responsible email marketer. The credit card company in the above anecdote tricked me into opening their letter. This post is not about bait and switch tactics. So please, use these strategies responsibly.

Email Open Rates

Email is a push medium, meaning you are in control of when messages are sent. Transactional emails aside, users have little control over when they’ll receive emails from your company. Because of this, marketers have abused their power and turned email into a prominent source for hype and spam.

Have you ever wondered why some emails get opened while others get junked? If your first thought is the subject line, you’d be wrong – well, partly wrong. There are actually four elements we can tweak to optimize email open rates. They’re called the Envelope Fields, and they consist of:

1. Subject Line – this is what your email is all about. It should be clear and offer specific value right away.
2. Preview Text – use this area to expand on the subject line, but not so much that there’s no need to open the email.
3. From Name – who’s sending the message?
4. From Email – what address is the message coming from?

From Name & From Email

I’m going to discuss each for a minute because they’re so critical to your emails being opened, yet I rarely see them customized. The From Name and From Email should never be vague or generic.

Bad

From: Sales (sales@somecompany.com)

Or worse…

From: No Reply (no-reply@somecompany.com)

Better

From: Steve Johnson (sjohnson@somecompany.com)

Or even…

From: Steve at Your Company (sjohnson@somecompany.com)

Do you see the difference between those examples? The bad ones are distant and impersonal. Heck, you can’t even reply to one of them! The better ones are relatable and humanizing:

“Oh, Steve Johnson? I know him! He’s good people. He took the time to craft this email just for me. I think I’ll give him the courtesy of opening it.”

In the following sections, I’ll give examples of the envelope fields in action for maximum inbox openage. (Yes, I made that word up.)

First things first, before sending any email … even those monthly newsletters your boss insists on sending, you need to do these two things: justify the message and connect to a problem.

Justify & Connect

Let’s say you work for a local car dealership that’s running a service special through the end of the month. You’ve been tasked with sending out an email to the database promoting the special. Which of these two possible sets of Envelope Fields do you think would earn more opens?

Example Email 1:

From: Service (service@somedealership.com)
To: you@yourdomain.com
Subject: Save on service!
Preview Text: Our dealership has plenty of service options. Stop in and check them out.

Example Email 2:

From: Steve Johnson (sjohnson@somedealership.com)
To: you@yourdomain.com
Subject: Save 25% on service now through the end of the month.
Preview Text: Hey {First Name}, it’s been a while since you’ve had your new truck in for service, why not take advantage of our discount?

Clearly, email 2 is better - but why? Let’s break it down and see how it does a fine job of justifying and connecting to a problem.

To justify the send, the email clearly outlined a service special that expires at the end of the month.

To connect to a problem, it uses contextual information from the database about the recipient’s service history and vehicle type to mention their truck and note that it’s been a while since the last service.

If you don’t have this level of detail for your list, don’t fret. Any personalization is better than no personalization. Did you know that, according to Campaign Monitor, subject lines with personalization are 26 percent more likely to be opened? That’s a big jump in open rates just for using information you already have about the recipient. What’s not to lose?

That’s why it is vital to personalize not just the content of your emails, but also the context of them. More on that here.

Urgency, Importance, and Relevancy

Now that you’ve justified the send and connected to an actual problem, you need to ask yourself three more questions about the email before clicking the send button:

1. Is it urgent?
2. Is it important?
3. Is it relevant?

Let’s look at example two from above again and see if we can pick out the three elements.

The urgency is in the expiration of the service special - only valid through the end of the month. Importance is in the clarity of the discount amount (25 percent off service), and relevance is the personalization of the vehicle type and service history of the recipient.

Final Pro Tips on Optimizing Email Open Rates

There are some general all-around best practices that are a good starting point when crafting pretty much any email campaign.

• Use Point First subject lines, or in the news world, don’t bury the headline. Essentially, put the most important tidbit first.
• Don’t be afraid of long subject lines either. Just make sure to put the most important part in the beginning, and keep in mind the device recipients will be reading email on.
• Include bracketed terms relevant to the content of your email to improve open rates. Things like [Video] or [Guide] or [Checklist] or [Download] can provide that extra boost of clarity that’ll tip the scale from junk to open.
• Use ellipsis (...) in your preview text to build suspense with the reader. Users want to know what comes next, and if they see those three little dots in the preview text, it'll prompt them to open the message to find out.
• Test. Just because something works well, doesn’t mean it can’t work better with some tweaking. If you have the ability to A/B test, then go for it.
• Use numbers in your subject line and/or preview text. Numbers drive curiosity.
• Ask questions. People love giving their opinions, so let them.
• Personalize where relevant. Just by using the recipient’s first name you can increase open rates. More detailed personalization will reap even greater open rates.

When it comes to improving your email open rates, the Envelope Fields are your best friend. Try experimenting with different combinations of information in each field to find the sweet spot for your company. If you can master this, your open rates will improve. Guaranteed.