Email open rate: 7 steps to really increase it

After our article on deliverability* in cold emailing, many of you asked us for advice to increase the opening rate of your emails, which is frankly the lifeblood. It was therefore logical for us to give you a checklist on some of our methods to improve your opening rate in cold emailing.

In this article, you will concretely understand how to maintain this opening rate. And if you no longer get “ghosted” by your prospects, we will have fulfilled our mission!

* Cold Emailing: the real method (step by step) to get the best deliverability

1) Cold Emailing: increase the email opening rate by segmenting your mailing lists

This seems logical to you but at Growth Room, we still see this error all too often with our customers. Indeed, segmenting your email base (by sector, purchase frequency, VIP,...) will allow you to get the best start if your objective is to improve your opening rate.

Why? You are also the target of prospecting emails on a daily basis and what do you do when an email does not seem interesting to you? You are deleting it! Yes, because the sender probably didn't take the time to study who you are and 'segment' you into the right contact list. Conversely, the only emails we respond to are emails that talk about a specific need that we have at the moment. If you too want to eradicate this type of practice, segment!

2) The subject of your email: the crux of the matter for a better opening rate

According to a study, the French employee receives on average 88 emails per day. This sad situation will therefore require you to redouble your effort to attract the attention of your prospect in this jungle of emails and seriously increase your opening rate.

To help you, here are our 3 tips:

• Get attention : there are 2 ways to attract the attention of your prospect through an email. Do you already know him? Say it at the beginning of the subject of your email. Don't you know him? Make sure to draw his attention with an anecdote or news about your sector.
• Use action verbs : we keep saying it to our customers, you must push your customers to take action with your object. Use and abuse action verbs such as' open ',' discover ',' know 'and lots of other verbs.
• Pay attention to the length : what do you do when you see an email subject that is too long? You are deleting it! So don't repeat the same mistake, avoid titles that are too long that will make your prospect want to put your email in the trash and that will not be beneficial for your opening rate.

3) Personalize your email objects: the key to success to boost the opening rate

To further increase the chances of opening your email, personalize it. Let's get rid of generalized content and your ebook download requests, they don't interest anyone in a title.

Indeed, with all the information you have at your disposal for your emailing campaign, address your prospect directly with his First name/ last name or the name of his company in the subject of the email will only increase your opening rate.

An example of a lead email with the name of the company and the product that was sent to the Dreem CMO, which was, of course, opened (although it doesn't open often!) :

4) Test the appearance of your live emails on a mailbox to improve the impact on the opening rate

A little tip that the team shares with you, use a tool that allows you to have a previewing of your email with email address providers. For this you can use the tool Preview My Email Here is the result below:

A good way to best prepare your email campaign for all email address providers and to ensure that there are no problems.

5) Pay attention to the time of sending: its influence on the opening rate of your emailing campaigns

The time you send your email is very important. An error on the time when you send your email, and you can be sure that your email will not be read and therefore opened. This will seem ridiculous to you but you don't send an email to your business prospect at 6 p.m. on a Friday (among many other examples of common sense).

Many studies exist on the subject but here are our recommendations for matching the time of sending and the opening rate:

• Best shipping days: Tuesday and Thursday
• Best shipping times: 7 am (when your prospect gets up)/10 am (in the middle of the morning, just after rush hour) and 2 pm (just after lunch)

If you're used to sending emails, take a look at the opening statistics based on the time you sent them.

6) Test your items with a (very) small advertising budget: a strategy to optimize the email opening rate

Do you really want your email to be opened? Test your object with a small advertising budget of 5 or 10€ with the person who takes care of the ads at home. Look at the version with the best conversion rate and you know you have a promising item.

If you're preparing to send an email to a base of over 1000 people, you can (and should!) separate your database into small samples in order to test several titles and contents. Take the time you need to use these samples, this step can change everything and will prevent you from severely handicapping your deliverability rate. You will take the winning version and be able to send it to the rest of the database.

7) Some examples of email campaigns that we liked at Growth Room: what worked for the opening rate

• A short and replicable example that has proved its worth, the famous Introduction: [Your name] <> [Prospect name]

• [Your product] will double the income of [The prospect's business] in 3 years
• Our opinion on [Prospect name]

Small bonus (yes yes, it works): The not applicable ! The Sidekick email tracker indicates that emails without objects get an average of 8% more opened.

Conclusion: Our 7 steps can transform the opening rate of your email campaigns

Don't worry, it's over! You now have all the cards in hand to increase your email opening rate. We will be delighted to hear that you are becoming the emailing star in your business.

As we know, between deliverability, segmentation, the constitution and enrichment of databases, etc. emailing can become quite time-consuming.

At Growth Room, one of our passions is precisely to set up these emailing scenarios with the aim of converting as much as possible, and automating! If you want help on the subject, simply write us an email at welcome@growthroom.co, we can discuss it with pleasure.

Cheers

Useful link:

Opening rate statistics SendinBlue

[BONUS] Our favorite tools/our expertise 👇 :

B2C :

Sendinblue

Mailjet

Klaviyo (Shopify)

Cold mailing (B2B):

Lemlist

Yamm

Activecampaign

PersitiQ