Improve your email open rates

Get to know the factors that determine your email open rate and the ways you can improve it

Your email engagement starts with an open, but sometimes your open rate may leave you feeling a little deflated. Don't worry, though! We have some pointers to help you increase your opens that cover a broad span of topics, from the no-brainers to the technical:

• Craft the right subject line
• Provide quality content
• Give your non-openers a second chance
• Check your reporting regularly to get a baseline
• Check the time your contacts opened
• Segment your contacts
• Perform some list hygiene
• Strengthen your reputation
• Troubleshoot when your contacts aren't receiving your emails

Be a better marketer: Want to learn more about email opens? Check out What is a Good Open Rate for an email and How to Get More Customers to Open Your Emails!

Craft the right subject line

Your subject line does most of the heavy lifting for your email; if it's not attention-grabbing or has become repetitive, your contacts won't even get to your content! But when you know your audience and your content is targeted, it makes all the difference. Putting the perceived benefits front and center is a surefire way for your email to get the attention it deserves, and we have lots of tools to help you do this:

• Follow best practices - Not sure where to start? Industry best practices can help you write a descriptive subject line that's short and effective, and doesn't land you in the spam folder.
• Pair your subject line with a preheader - Most mail clients display the subject line and an additional line of text called the pre-header. It gives you a little more room to summarize your content so your contacts know what they can expect in your email.
• Add personalization - Your readers are bombarded with emails every day. Adding your contacts' names to the subject line is an easy way to grab attention and make your email feel more personal. You can also get a little creative with other contact details, too!
• Occasionally add emoji - Emoji are useful for setting the tone of your email and for adding a little pop of color that catches your contacts' eyes in their inboxes. When overused, emoji can seem unprofessional, but when used strategically, they're a great tool to have in your toolbelt.
• Get a recommendation - Sometimes it feels like your subject line writes itself, but other times it can feel like nothing feels quite right. A little AI can help you when you're stuck, and you can use the recommendation as-is or use it as a jumping-off point. If you find yourself using the same subject line over and over, give this tool a try!
• A/B test when you're not sure - If you have lots of ideas, testing your subject line to see which one performs better is a smart strategy to maximize your opens. Two subject lines are sent to a portion of your audience, and the one that gets more opens is sent to everyone else.
  
  
  
  

Design tip: Segmenting your contacts can make it easier to write an effective subject line because you're not trying to write something that is one-size-fits-all. You can send your email multiple times with different subject lines, each designed for a unique segment!

Provide quality content

Your subject line was enough to get your contacts to open this time, but what about next time? If your content doesn't hold your contacts' interest, your subject line might not be enough to bring them back again. Your content should be relevant and informative and include a call-to-action so your contacts can further engage with you:

• The elements of an engaging email [Download]
• Fill a newsletter-style email with engaging content
• Email content ideas [Download]
• Email Content Ideas by Industry
• Create more personalized emails to improve engagement
• The best length for an email
• Customize what each contact sees in your email with dynamic content
• Use the Content Generator to write email, landing page, social, and SMS content for you

Did you know? Your open rate is only a part of your email engagement! Don't neglect your email's click rate because it tells you how engaged your contacts are with your content after they engage with your subject line.

Give your non-openers a second chance

Have you ever skipped past an email in your own inbox? There are endless reasons your contacts may not open your email the first time around. Give your contacts a second chance to see and open your email by scheduling it to automatically resend to non-openers. A second chance for your contacts means a second chance for you, too! Take the opportunity to change your subject line or select a different time of day to send your email. You can compare the performance of both your original send and your resend on the Email Details page to see which performed better, and then use this information the next time you're ready to hit "Send":

• Automatically resend an email to contacts who don't open
• View reporting for an email resent to non-openers<
  
  
  
  

The data shows: A best practice is to send your email to your non-openers once, but don't overuse a resend. It's better to look at the contacts that didn't open after two attempts and figure out a way to reconnect than it is to keep sending something they don't have any interest in (that's what spam is!).

Check your reporting regularly to get a baseline

Before you can make improvements to your open rate, you have to know where you stand. Checking your overall email reporting lets you see how each campaign has performed over time and compare your emails to each other. You may see a steady rate email-to-email, but you can also see fluctuations caused by a number of factors, like the audience you sent to, the time of day you sent, and the subject line. The industry average gives you a goal to reach for, and it isn't often as high as you think to be effective:

• View your email reporting
• How email opens are tracked

Important: A "good" open rate varies by industry. Make sure you have an industry selected in your account settings so that you can see how your open rate compares to your industry's average within your email reporting.

Check the time your contacts opened

While everyone might have an email address, each demographic checks their inbox at different times throughout the day; some people check their email right when they wake up in the morning, while others do it during lunch:

• Review your send times - check your email reporting to see the times that each open occurred, and use it as a gauge for when to send. If you routinely send a newsletter email, where you're expected to send on a certain date or time, checking the open times can still help you find a sweet spot to use going forward.
• Check your time zone - When your email is sent, your reporting is based on the time zone you select in your account settings and is not adjusted based on the timezone your contacts are in.

Be a better marketer: Want to learn more about the best time to send? Check out The Best Time to Send a Marketing Email: A Complete Guide.

Segment your contacts

A little contact segmentation can have a huge impact on your open rate. When your email content doesn't connect with your intended audience, they're going to get bored and start ignoring your emails. People are more likely to open and read an email when it's full of content that is relevant to them; our segmentation tools help you break your contacts into groups based on their location, interests, shopping behaviors, etc., allowing you to tailor your emails to each group’s preferences. You can approach segmentation in a couple of ways: create an email and choose the contacts you think are most likely to resonate with it, or choose a group of contacts and tailor your email content to them:

• Understanding contact segmentation
• Using contact lists, tags, and segments based on your list size
• Create lists and segments
• Choosing criteria and using AND/OR logic in the Segment Builder
  
  
  
  

The data shows: Shorter emails with personalized content have better open rates than longer emails with content for everyone!

Perform some list hygiene

Unresponsive contacts can become disengaged for lots of different reasons, but ultimately bring down your open rate. Over time, you want to make sure you're performing some routine list maintenance to keep your contact list healthy and make sure you're able to engage with all of your contacts:

• Collect quality email addresses - Contacts that provide permission to email them are more likely to engage with your content because they expect you to send it to them. Contacts that are added to your list without their consent are highly likely to report your emails as spam and are a violation of our email permission policy.
• Look for contacts that aren't on any list - You may have contacts you haven't been emailing because, for one reason or another, they were removed from all of the lists in your account. You can find these contacts using the list status filter on the Contacts page. Once you find them, you can add them to a list and send them content that they missed but might find valuable.
• Manage your bounces - Your email reporting shows you all the email addresses that you send to, but that didn't receive your email. Inactive email addresses aren't automatically removed for you, so every time you send, check your reporting and look for contacts that are recommended for removal. The number of bounces you have is factored into your open rate!
• Engage with your least engaged contacts - You worked hard to collect your contacts, and it's easier to reconnect if their engagement drops than to collect all new contacts. Using our Segment Builder, you can find your least engaged contacts and then send them targeted content to try to re-engage; this doesn't always have to involve offering a discount, either!

Did you know? Your email marketing efforts are just a part of your marketing toolbelt, and Constant Contact offers both social media marketing and SMS marketing tools to help you meet your customers where they're at! If your open rate isn't budging, ask your contacts if they'd rather hear from you through SMS or try enticing your social media followers to join your list.

Strengthen your reputation

Your sending reputation is everything! If you're using Constant Contact, you've got our world-class reputation behind you, but there are additional things you can do to protect your brand reputation:

• Maximize your deliverability rate - Before anyone can look at your subject line and open your email, your email needs to land in an inbox. Make sure you're following best practices to prevent your email from blocked from delivery or routed to the spam folder.
• Be recognizeable - Your "from email" and "from name" are visible from within the inbox and let your contacts know who is sending the email. If they're trusted, your contacts are more likely to open your email. Make sure they are consistent with each other or your email can get flagged by an email provider as spam or as promotional content instead of landing in the inbox.
  Tip: Depending on the size and nature of your business or organization, it's better not to use your own name in your "from email" address.
• Authenticate your domain - You are much more likely to land in the inbox when your recipients' email providers can prove that an email is directly from you or sent from an authorized party, like Constant Contact. We recommend having your own custom domain, but if you're not there yet and are using domain like, @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, there are tools to help you too.

Troubleshooting when your contacts aren't receiving your emails

If you have contacts that are telling you that they aren't receiving your emails, it can sometimes be an issue with your content or sending reputation, and sometimes it can be an issue with the email provider or a security program. Here's what to know:

• Avoiding image-only emails
• Safelist email addresses in an email client or security program
• Why emails get delivered to Gmail's promotions tab
• Clipped content and distorted images in Gmail and Outlook
• Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s email authentication requirements
• Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blocked email

Save time and achieve better results! Whether you want to get help with your strategy or are looking to outsource your marketing, we offer a variety of paid services to meet your needs. Get a free consultation to determine which marketing service is right for you. Rates start as low as $60/month. Request service consultation.

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