A quick and easy way to increase your email open rates
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There’s a very simple thing you can do to increase your open rates on every email you send. Read on to find out how to do this, even if you have a tiny list, you’re not great at writing copy, or don’t have much of an email strategy.
How to increase your email open rates
This could be a very short blog post because I could reveal the secret, you go off and do it and Voila! you have more opens for your emails.
But of course, I’m going to give you a little more than that to make this the most effective strategy you can use to consistently get higher open rates with every email you send.
And the secret there is in the wording I used… “consistently”... but I’ll get to that in a moment.
What do you need to do to get higher open rates? Simple.
Just send your email again.
Ta-da *takes a bow*. “Thank you, I’d like to thank my manager, my mum…”
No, sorry, that’s not all you have to do. Well it IS but there’s more to it than that.
You take the email you sent, and a few days later you resend that email to the segment of people who “didn’t open” the previous email.
Most email service providers (ESP’s) have the ability for you to resend to unopened or send to those who didn’t open “insert name of email”.
With this strategy you’re targeting the people who didn’t open your email previously so that those who did aren’t bothered with another email that is essentially the same one they’ve already read.
The trick of doing this effectively is to use a different subject line.
Often, the reason why people haven’t opened the email in the first place is because the original email subject line didn’t pique their interest.
Of course there are other reasons someone might not have opened your email but when you think about the ones who WILL potentially open your resend as opposed to those who don’t have a chance because it ended up in their spam or promotions folder, you’ll be targeting those who weren’t persuaded to open the original email line.
Using a new subject line, one that is completely different to the previous one (perhaps one that uses more curiosity, or is more direct in describing the purpose of the email) allows you a second chance to capture your reader's attention without having to write a new email.
Another tactic you can use as well as changing the subject line is to add a little extra information in the email to explain that you’re resending a previous email they may have missed. However sometimes this can draw attention to the fact that you’re “stalking” them (said lightly of course, but some people can get weirded out by the Big Brother nature of what we know from the metrics and data we collect from our email systems).
Try out the new subject line with resend first and then on other resends, maybe mention “did you see this?” and have the content of the previous email below.
The “con” of resending to unopens
There is one thing that might make resending your email ineffective and that can be some ESP’s don’t register mobile opens. Meaning a subscriber MAY open your original email on mobile but because of the nature of the platform, it may be recorded as an “unopen”.
So when you resend your email, you’re sending the same email they’ve already read.
However, I think this is not enough of a reason to NOT resend you emails.
From this strategy I have had half as many opens to my emails, meaning a 50% increase in open rates.
Give it a go and see what results you get. It’s possible, if you hit the right nerve with your subject line, you could double your open rate.
How to make this method more effective
I mentioned there's a way to make this method more effective and it revolves around “consistency”.
If you commit to sending regular emails with a consistent schedule, by resending to unopens you can get even better results every time you do it.
Send emails consistently and you’ll “train” your readers to expect, and often seek out, your emails. And with a resend strategy in place, you can capture those who missed your email the first time because of a busy schedule or disinterest in the first subject line.
Try out this resend strategy and let me know what kind of results you’re getting by sending me a message on my contact page here.
Related content:
My worst ever subject lines (and what you can learn from my mistakes)
How to boost your emails with three simple techniques to produce more revenue from every send