Best Practices: Increase your Open Rates | Predictive Response

Best Practices: Increase your Open Rates

The information below may help you increase your open rates.

 Know Your Audience: If you spend time getting to know the interests and preferences of the people on your email list, you will naturally send more relevant and timely information. This is always a good place to start.

 Prune Your List: If your list includes contacts that never open your emails or email addresses that bounce, remove them from your list. Pruning dead weight will focus your energies on your true audience.

 Create Thoughtful Subject Lines: Anytime you engage the mind of your email recipients with a message that is compelling or creative in some way, you will get better results. Consider sending a subject line that is stated as a question. When used sparingly, this simple approach is known to increase open rates.

 A/B Test Your Subject Line: Predictive AM can help you to test alternate subject lines by sending your email to a sample group of members and then selecting and sending the remainder of the emails with the subject line that yields the best result.

 Identify Yourself Clearly With Your Email Address: Ensure that the email address you send campaigns from clearly communicates who you or your organization is. Minimize the number of times you change your sender email address

 Use a Teaser: Whitepapers, blog posts, helpful video content – if you spend the energy required to create these assets, tell your audience about them. If you have something useful for your audience, keep your subject line short and sweet – and expand on your message in the body of the email.

 Imply Urgency: When creating a time sensitive message or one that conveys scarcity, it can spur action. Of course a simple “Act Now” message can sound a bit spammy so be careful how you word your message. Limited contest entries, holiday messages, seasonal sales are all examples of events or time related messages that create urgency. “Only a Few Seats Left” or “7 Days to Act” are examples of time sensitive subject lines that convey urgency.

 Spark Curiosity: Subject lines that pique the interest of your audience by making them curious to read the rest of the message. Sometimes, an ellipse can be helpful. The subject line: “It Was A Dark and Stormy Night …” naturally makes a reader curious to read the rest of the message to see what happens next.

 Keep it Brief: Sometimes the shorter the message, the better. If an entire message can be read in the preview field of Outlook for instance, it can increase the open rate and the impact of your message. Super short, Twitter – like messages can be effective on occasion.

 Be Controversial: If your organization and brand is comfortable with making controversial statements, then such a statement in your subject line can initiate a response in the form of an opened email.

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