Email is by far one of the best online marketing tactics. In fact, 59% of markers agree and say it’s their most effective marketing channel. And on top of that for every $1 spent on email marketing businesses see $44 made in return. There is just not many platforms out there that can get your that kind of marketing return. And that’s why in this article I’m going to go over 5 tips to improve email open rates.

1. Better subject. By far your subject line is one of the most important factors to whether your email gets opened. Writing better subject lines will get your more opens. I suggest studying subject lines that other people have used successfully. You can find a number of them by searching Google for things like “subject lines that work”, etc. Another way to find subject lines that work for you is to A/B test them. Additionally, you want to consider that on mobile and some email clients a longer subject line will get cut off. So plan for that name either write shorter subject lines or ones that will still draw people to open them even if they are cut off.
2. Write a great first sentence. Something that many people don’t realize is that in most email clients, the first sentence is shown as a preview in your inbox. You should use this to advantage and make sure the first sentence of your email really draws people to want to find out more and click to open your email. Again, with this you may want to A/B test different style of writing your first sentence to see what works best with your email audience.
3. From address should be a person. It’s been found that people are more likely to open an email if the from address is a real person. So make sure your emails are coming from a real person’s name. For example, here at Gallagher Website Design, we would have the emails come from Sean (our CEO) or any other staff member. Additionally, women’s names seem to get more opens then guys. So if you really want to optimize this you’ll want to use a girls name or have a female at your company send out the emails.
4. Authenticate your emails. If your emails are not arriving your to your recipients’ inbox then you’re certainly not going to get any opens. You should set up and check that your emails are being authenticated. If you’re not sure what this is, email authentication is basically a way for email companies to verify that the email really did come from you. Some email companies will not accept mail that is not authenticated, so you could be losing out there – they won’t even see it in their spam box. And it’s much more likely to get placed into the spam folder if it’s not authenticated.
5. Send at better times. There are certain times and days of the week when people are more likely to open their emails. I would suggest sending your emails out so they arrive in their inbox just before these times, thus putting them first in the inbox and making it much more likely they get opened. Some general best times to send emails are 10 am and 8 pm. You should also take note of when your emails are opened as depending on your audience it could be different than the times I mentioned.

If you want to optimize your emails for a better return on investment, sign up for our free elevation where we’ll dive into your emails and workout what it’ll take to improve the results you get from email. Use the free evaluation link below.

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