What Email Marketing Tactics Increase Open Or Click-Through Rates?
Marketer Focus
What Email Marketing Tactics Increase Open Or Click-Through Rates?
In the ever-evolving landscape of email marketing, strategies that boost engagement can make all the difference. We've gathered insights from Owners, Founders, and seasoned marketing professionals to uncover their most effective tactics. From optimizing send times to leveraging user-generated content, discover the seven transformative strategies that led to remarkable improvements in open and click-through rates.
- Optimize Send Times Based on Data
- Personalize Subject Lines with Names
- Segment Lists for Targeted Content
- Create Emotional Connections in Emails
- Tease Content with Open-Loop Strategy
- Personalize with Merge Tags and Preview Texts
- Boost Engagement with User-Generated Content
Optimize Send Times Based on Data
Send-time optimization, leveraging data analytics to determine the optimal times to send emails to each recipient based on their past behavior, increases email engagement rates every time we have implemented this strategy and A/B tested it against batch emails or workflow emails.
Send-time optimization allows you to highly personalize your emails by sending them based on the day of the week and the time of the day that they are most likely to engage, based on past data. Although this is time-consuming, you can do this in your marketing automation platform. There are also tools available that can completely automate this by using AI.
First, you want to collect data on when recipients typically open and interact with emails. Then, you can use algorithms and machine learning to analyze patterns and identify peak engagement times for different segments. (As I mentioned, there are tools available for this, so it's not such a manual task.) From there, you can group recipients based on their optimal send times. Because you have this data, you can now implement this for your batch email (one-time campaigns) or even for your ongoing, evergreen marketing automation workflows.
The benefits of send-time optimization include increased open and click rates because you're most likely to reach someone's inbox at a time they are likely to engage. You will see better overall engagement rates, including email delivery and reduced opt-outs. Finally, you are providing your audience with a much more personalized experience by emailing them when they are most likely to interact.
Personalize Subject Lines with Names
One effective email marketing tactic that significantly boosted our open rates was personalizing the email subject lines with the recipient's first name. By integrating this personal touch, we saw an immediate increase in engagement, with open rates climbing by around 20%.
In one specific campaign targeting our existing customer base for a new product launch, this approach not only elevated the open rates but also enhanced the overall interaction within the email, leading to a higher conversion rate. This simple yet impactful strategy has since become a staple in our email marketing efforts.
Segment Lists for Targeted Content
One email marketing tactic that led to a noticeable increase in our open and click-through rates at My Millennial Guide was personalizing and segmenting our subscriber lists. Initially, we were blasting the same generic newsletters to our entire email database without much targeting.
However, we found significantly better engagement once we started separating subscribers based on specific interests and demographics. We created different email flows tailored to segments like recent college graduates, young families, investing beginners, debt management, and so on.
By delivering more personalized, hyper-relevant content aligning with each segment's particular financial situation and goals, our open rates improved by over 15% across subscriber groups. Click-through rates also saw a bump as people were more compelled to read advice pertaining to their real-life money challenges and milestones.
Create Emotional Connections in Emails
In email marketing, creating emotional connections drives higher engagement. I use subject lines that provoke curiosity or tap into emotions, fostering a conversational tone in the email. By sharing relatable stories and avoiding sales language, I build trust and authenticity. Encouraging two-way communication, like replies or surveys, strengthens the bond. This approach consistently boosts open and click-through rates while nurturing lasting relationships with the audience.
Tease Content with Open-Loop Strategy
Using the “open-loop” copy strategy to only share some juicy information about a story or potential offer really helped increase my click-through rates. So, rather than simply linking a button or text saying “Click here” or the offer name, I tease the result or a desirable element from the content they'll find on the other side of the click, thus enticing readers to click through to see what I was alluding to!
Personalize with Merge Tags and Preview Texts
I don’t have exact numbers to support this, but I do believe that adding first-name merge tags and including compelling preview texts go a long way in encouraging recipients to open marketing emails. I also observed that when I segmented my mailing list subscribers and targeted each group with personalized, journey-specific email sequences, my click-through rates improved noticeably.
Boost Engagement with User-Generated Content
Our email open rates increased significantly due to using user-generated content (UGC) in our emails' subject lines and email bodies. We observed that many consumers were excitedly posting images and videos of themselves using our items on social media. We thus began adding this user-generated content directly into our emails.
A subject line might say, “Your Photos in [Your Product]!” for instance, or “Check Out How Much People Love It.” The email body would feature these user-generated images, videos, and brief reviews or testimonies.
Our audience responded well to this tactic because it seemed realistic and genuine. Curiosity and camaraderie were piqued by witnessing actual individuals utilizing and enjoying our items. Customers were keen to view more user-generated content and investigate related products, which resulted in a rise in both open and click-through rates. It benefits both parties by increasing sales and fostering engagement and trust.
