Email Newsletter Sign upHow to Increase Email Open Rates and Email Deliverability
By Sarah Miller 7/15/2020
Your email open rate, the percentage of opened email, is not only important from a communications perspective, but also because email services watch your open rates to see if your messages are wanted or are SPAM. Therefore, it is essential that your emails get delivered and get opened.
This article will tell you how to improve both your email deliverability and your email open rate.
The difference between Email Deliverability and Email Open Rate
Email deliverability is determined by whether internet service providers and people's SPAM filters let your email through. This is often determined by your email reputation. Once your email gets through, your email open rate is then ultimately the decision of your recipients – whether or not they choose to open and read your email.
What is Email Reputation?
Email reputation is influenced by the quality of your email list and whether you follow best email practices. If you are concerned about the quality of your current email list, there are things you can do to continue to refine your list and make it better.
What You Can Do to Improve Email Deliverability and Open Rate
Get Email Consent – When people are expecting to hear from you, they are more likely to open your email and are less likely to report it as spam.
Remove/Correct Bounced Emails – Internet service providers (ISP's) monitor the number of bounced emails from a sender and it can affect the sender's overall email reputation score. Removing bounced email addresses from your email list immediately improves the quality of your email list. A smaller email list will yield a better and more accurate email open rate percentage. If you are using CorpNote, your emails are sent from your email address so you will receive the email bounces and can continue to refine and clean your email list.
Comply with SPAM and Online Commerce Laws – All business emails must contain your physical address, contact information and the ability to unsubscribe from your email list. In many countries, this is required by law. It is also important because internet service providers scan your email for this information and may have an impact on your email deliverability.
Remove Unsubscribed Emails – This is essential for email reputation and it's the law. If you are using CorpNote, email recipients can click a link to unsubscribe or subscribe to your email list. If you accidentally include an 'unsubscribed' person in an email list, you will be notified that the person has unsubscribed and an email will not be sent to that contact. Even if you delete a contact and then re-import a contact, their unsubscribe status will remain. CorpNote also provides you with a list of your unsubscribed emails and a downloaded excel file so you can update your other email databases.
Subject Line – Avoid spammy subject lines and content. Here are examples of what to avoid:
- phrases like free, discount, guarantee etc.
- ALL CAPS
- excessive punctuation !!! ???
- too many special characters **$! WOW! $ **
- too many 'click here' links in an email
Subscriber Expectations – Send emails that are consistent with what people were expecting to receive when they subscribed. People will be more likely to unsubscribe from your email list if they feel duped.
Include a Preheader – Preheaders are like a 2nd subject line. This is a line of text that shows after the subject line when the email is viewed in your recipient's inbox, and it's an extra way of encouraging someone to open your email. When used properly, it can dramatically increase your chance that someone will open your email. AI's like Siri and Alexa read emails aloud and will read your email preheaders. On apple devices – depending on your recipient's settings – they may see up to 5 lines of text which is about 265 characters.
Basic rules for preheaders:
- Don't repeat the subject line
- Make your subject line and preheader text work together so it encourages the person to open the email
If you are using CorpNote, you can add preheader text on the address/send email screen below the subject line.
Don't Send too Many Emails at Once – Since spammers blast a lot of emails all at once, ISP's are looking for this type of traffic as they attempt to reduce the amount of spam in their customer's inboxes. If you are using CorpNote, we offer several options that help you to reduce sending too many emails at one time.
Send Recognizable Emails – Be consistent in the design of your emails. Incorporate your company's colors, logo and company name so people will immediately recognize your email in their inbox and are less likely to report it as spam. This is why the design of your email subscriber "welcome email" is important. It conditions your subscribers to recognize your brand. If your brand changes, send an email that intermixes your new branding in with the old branding to let your recipients know what's coming.
Monitor the Email Address and Domain/IP Address you are Sending From – It is essential to send your emails from an email address that is not on any SPAM or "block" lists. Actively monitor your email account so you can receive email bounce backs and emails from people who click "reply" to unsubscribe instead of clicking on the unsubscribe link in your email.
What You Can Ask Your Email Administrator To Do
We recommend that you send email from your own domain name instead of using a large, 'free' email provider. By using your own domain name, ISP's can evaluate your specific email reputation and it can improve your chances that an ISP will let your email through their gateway.
Set Sender Authentication – The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record authenticates who can send email on your domain's behalf. Spammers will often forge the "from" email address, so setting SPF authentication is essential to ensuring your domain name cannot be used by a spammer.
If you are using CorpNote, your emails are sent from CorpNote's email servers on your behalf using your domain name and real email address. Your SPF record should be updated to authenticate CorpNote as a trusted sender to ensure your emails get through. Please read the following FAQs about adding CorpNote to your SPF record.
- How to allow your own email server to receive CorpNote emails
- How to tell the rest of the world that CorpNote is an approved sender for your domain
What You Can Ask Your Subscribers To Do
Whether you're sending a "welcome email" to new subscribers or you are "rebooting" an older list, here are some tips for what to include in your next email.
Ask Them to Make You a Trusted Sender
Encourage your recipients to put your 'From' email address in their address book and/or their "trusted" or "approved" sender list.
If you are sending email from your own domain name, consider adding a sentence to your welcome email that says something like this: "To ensure you get our emails, add you@yourdomain.com to your address book and list of trusted senders"
The Bottom Line
- Send emails in-line with what you said you were going to send when people subscribed to your email list
- Keep a clean (valid emails and no bounces) 'permission' based email list
- Be consistent with the branding in your emails
- If you use CorpNote to send your emails, set the SPF record to authenticate CorpNote as a trusted sender of emails on your behalf
Get email marketing tips in your inbox – Sign up for our email newsletter
