THE email open rate is a statistic returned by emailing software after issuing a campaign. It is important to take into account to build a Marketing strategy effective in the long term. In general, when dealing with a large list of contacts, the use of statistics is essential. These allow you to note the relevance of the messages written and sent by your company. We explain everything about the opening rate.
Open rate: definition and statistical issues
THE opening rate represents, in %there proportion of recipients of one email campaign which actually opens the sent message. To calculate it, simply divide the number of open mails at least once by the total number of recipients.
For example: you send an email campaign to 100 recipients. Among your 100 recipients, only 20 of them actually open the email they receive. In this case, your open rate is 20% (20/100).
THE the opening rate is thus part of the family of KPIs (Key performance indicators). It gives a signal on the relevance of a Marketing strategy.
New example: you send two email campaigns per week to promote blog posts, to the same audience, for a month on Tuesday and Saturday. At the end of the month, you see that the average opening rate Tuesday is 25% and the average opening rate on Saturday is only 12%. You can deduce from this comparison that Saturday is a bad send day. Perhaps by shifting your campaigns to another day of the week, you could increase opens and ensure more reads.
Finally, the opening rate is important to take into account for a company that sets up a newsletter regular. Admittedly, in the short term, it is not linearly linked to the conversion rate. Indeed, the conversion is often generated by a loyal reader, who can take the time to read your emails even on days with low opening rates. However, ensure that your newsletter be read makes it possible to sensitize new prospects. This is precisely how you create new loyal readers and therefore optimize your conversion over the long term.
To have : Free newsletter
How do you recognize a good opening rate for emails and newsletters?
In this regard, it is difficult to give an absolute figure. It should first be remembered that emails sent in a transactional context are more open than those sent for purely promotional purposes. It’s obvious: a new customer expects to receive news about his order, and remains attentive to it (some companies exploit this phenomenon to try to make additional sales).
Furthermore, the good open rate depends on the quality of your contact list and your business sector. For this second point, we also find, according to certain statistical studies, benchmarks sector by sector. In general, the figures fluctuate between 15% and 25%.
Nevertheless, each company is so different that the right opening rate can only really be estimated in relative terms. The main interest of the opening rate is to compare the effectiveness of two strategies or two campaigns run by the same organization.
7 tips to boost the open rate in emailing
For boost your open ratesseven simple tricks can be implemented.
1- Select the correct sender name for an emailing campaign
On the interface of a mailbox, the name of each sender is the information that is displayed in the most visible way. To ensure a good opening frequencyso it is important that the sender name of your email campaigns evoke positive feelings in your recipients. In this regard, several pitfalls must be avoided.
First, it’s rarely a good idea to stick to your business name. Indeed, except for very large companies whose brand image is developed, the company name remains a cold thing in the eyes of customers. On the contrary, putting a first name as sender induces a feeling of closeness. Remember that when they open their mailbox, the most of your recipients expect to read a friend’s message first. However, a friend writes with his first name. We will therefore benefit from doing the same.
Nevertheless, it is also necessary to avoid that the sender’s name is unknown to your new recipients. If your Marketing strategy is based on a character (personal branding), subscribers to your newsletter will relocate it without difficulty. But if not, you can opt for the formula “*Sarah* or *Théo* for *name of your company*”.
Finally, it is better avoid frequent changes of sender. than the same person from your company is always presented as the sender of your campaigns facilitates the creation of a form of intimacy or even sympathy.
2- Formulate an original and impactful email subject
After the sender’s name, thesubject of a message is the second most important piece of information highlighted by email boxes. To optimize the likelihood that your recipients will click, it is therefore important to think about it carefully. First, the bulk email software almost all have functions for integrating information about your recipients.
For example, you can write %FIRSTNAME% to ask your software to automatically enter the first name of each recipient in a line of text. However, studies have shown that the average opening rate increases by almost 30%all other things being equal, when the recipient is named in the subject line of an email1. It is therefore a strategy to use.
In addition, it is good to mention in the subject of your emails the idea that your recipient will find valuable information there. Objects such as ” How to make …”, “ X rules to improve your … ” Or ” The secret to …” imply that you have interesting knowledge to pass on.
THE pre-headeron the other hand, is the short text that appears below the object in the interface of a email inbox. It allows you to give more information about the content of a message. By default, the pre-header contains the beginning of the text of your messages. But, it is important to know: the pre-header can be personalized.
Thus, we can add an additional element at little cost to increase the chances of appealing to or arousing the curiosity of your recipients. But don’t forget: today, the majority of emails are read on smartphones2. However, small screens limit the display of pre-header. It is therefore crucial to put the hard-hitting information at the beginning of the sentence.
4- Use segmentation to reach the right audience
In marketing, it is said that the most important issue is to present the right message, at the right time, to the right reader. Indeed, the best way to ensure that one of your messages is read (and that you are not considered as spam), it is still to send it to the recipient who wants to read it. To do this, it is necessary to take advantage of the segmentation capabilities provided by the emailing software. You can thus divide a list on criteria that will allow the sending of more relevant campaigns.
For example: your business sells men’s shoes and women’s shoes. Knowing the gender of each of your recipients helps split your contact list into two parts. Thus, you make sure to send emails made for women to women, and vice versa.
5- Maintain and feed a list of contacts
Furthermore, the the opening rate is directly linked to the quality of a list. The more your company’s contacts are interested in its offers, the more likely they are to respond to your emailing. It is therefore necessary to continually feed your list with qualified contacts. To do this, the landing page remains one of the best tools.
Furthermore, the spam filters can degrade your open rates by harming the deliverability of your emailing campaigns. It is a crucial issue to prevent your campaigns from failing there. To this end, you can advise your contacts to add you to their address book. The welcome email to a newsletter is a good opportunity for this.
Finally, we advise you to always ensure include an unsubscribe link in your emails. It is important to respect the law (GDPR) and thus avoid complaints, which may themselves damage the reputation of your sending server.
6- A/B test the emailing strategy put in place
L’A/B testing is also part of the solutions to be implemented for optimize your open rates. What is A/B testing? The principle is quite simple. Simply create two versions of the same email campaign. You simply change the first visible elements of it, such as the object and the pre-header. Then, you send each of these two versions to two samples of your contact list, which no characteristic otherwise distinguishes. Based on the results, you’ll get an idea of which version worked best. It will then be a question of using this version for a mass sending to the rest of your list.
7- Favor the smartphone with responsive emailing
Finally, as mentioned above, in 2022 the proportion of emails read on a mobile device (smartphones and tablets) is estimated at 61.9%.2. It is therefore imperative to adapt the design of your emails so that they are read correctly. However, a readable design on all screen formats is referred to as ” responsive “. For example, opting for an adaptive text size. However, creating these types of designs is easier than you might think. In fact, the use of quality mass mailing software is generally sufficient to automatically generate responsive emails.
FAQs
In a marketing campaign, when to send a newsletter or an email?
For ensure a good open rateTHE timing is a factor that must be taken into account. However, there is no absolute answer, nor perfect time to send an email campaign. To optimize your timing, you must observe the behavior of your audience. We must study at what times and on what days of the week it seems the most reactive.
In addition, trigger marketing is a good solution for fine-tuning your timings. After some settings, you can decide theautomatic sending of emailswhen one of your contacts visits certain pages or product sheets on your website.
What is an email click-through rate?
THE email click-through rate gives an idea of the interaction frequency that your campaigns generate. It is calculated with the following formula:
Number of recipients having clicked at least once on the link of an email campaign / Number of recipients having opened your email campaign.
THE result obtained is in %. As the the opening rateTHE click through rate is a performance indicator. If it is very low compared to the opening rate, it may mean that the content of your emails is not compelling enough to trigger an action.
What are the other statistics to take into account in an emailing campaign?
Besides the the opening rateother statistics should be considered to properly optimize your email marketing strategy.
In particular, it is necessary to ensure:
• At click through rate (Number of clicks on a link/number of emails sent);
• At churn rate (Number of unsubscribes/number of emails sent);
• At deliverability rate (Number of newsletters delivered/number of emails sent).