Tips To Help Increase Email Response Rate

Nobody wants to spend time crafting an email campaign only to see a small percentage of the emails being opened and an even lower response rate.

Follow the advice in this article to help improve your email marketing campaign results, increase email open rate, and increase the email response rate.

Formatting And Spelling Matter

Many people check their emails on their phones, so if your email isn’t viewable on a mobile device, it’s likely to be deleted. Optimize your email campaigns to be mobile-friendly. Also, skip the colorful formatting and fun fonts; keep your email format simple to avoid detracting from the main message.

Proofread your email a few times before clicking Send. Spelling and grammar mistakes will make your email seem unprofessional and can decrease the chances of a response.

Use a professional, branded template. It should align with your company and marketing efforts. This gives your email campaigns a sense of cohesion and makes it seem like you are investing time and effort into the email.

Keep An Eye On Your Data

Your email software - whether it is MailChimp, Aweber, or something else - likely informs you what your email open and email response rates are. Use this information to help you learn when is your best day and the best time of day to send emails. If you notice that opens and replies drop off after 11 am, try only sending emails before then and see if your results improve.

Include A Call To Action

Each email should include a clear call to action. What is the reason for your email? What goal are you trying to achieve? Keep it simple so that it doesn’t involve a significant commitment or lots of effort from the reader. For example, rather than asking them to make time in their schedule to meet with you, include a link for them to learn more.

You may be automating your emails to send out to thousands of people, but you don’t want them to feel that way. You want each person opening your email to feel as though you are writing to them. Ask people to reply. If they do, make sure you - or someone on your team - is available to respond to the replies you receive.

Many people are already using their phones to read emails. Asking them to call your business isn’t asking for a great deal of extra effort. They already have their phone in their hand. They only have to click on your phone number to connect with you.

Include Links

Put links in your emails, and make it easy for readers to click the links in your emails. If they want to find out more information about a sale, invite them to click a link to see more. You can also make the images in your emails link to your site pages. If a customer clicks on an appealing image of a shirt, it takes them to the page on your website where they can buy that shirt.

Invite readers to get in touch with you on social networks, and include a link to your profiles. This will let them get to know you and learn more about you because they can read through your profiles and your latest status updates and shares. It also helps add credibility to your offer, because readers can see who you are and the work you have done.

Use Trigger Emails

Trigger emails are emails that get sent after the customer takes action. It could be a thank you email after a purchase, a discount offered after an abandoned cart or a happy birthday email. This would be based on the information in their subscriber profile. These emails often have a high click-through rate because of how highly personalized they are.

Personalize Your Emails

When you spend the time to include a few lines that show you know the recipient, they are more likely to open and engage with your email. This involves doing some research on the recipient before crafting your email so that you can get the details right. Look at their website, read their recent posts, and check their latest social media updates for clues to their interests. Try using the phrase “I am emailing you because…”

Make the subject line personal, rather than seeming like it’s part of a mass email list. Use the information you’ve learned from your research to mention their country and avoid vague words like “your state.” If you can connect with your reader initially on a social network, like through a simple retweet on Twitter, for example, it will make your name look familiar and increase the email response rate.

Another way to personalize your emails is to send them from a person’s name, rather than a company name. This can significantly increase the chances of the email response rate as well as the open rate. Include a signature line with your name, email, phone number, job title, company name, and company website. You may want to consider including a small photo of yourself as well so that people know to whom they are replying. 

Keep It Short And Emphasize The Benefits

Focus on creating a short email that takes about thirty seconds to read through. It should catch the reader’s attention in the first line or two so that they read to the end. Acknowledge that they’re probably getting lots of cold emails and are not reading them, and then make yours stand out from the noise. Make it all about them and their pain points, not all about you and how great you are.

Put the attention on the benefits, not the features, of your call to action. This means you will need to invest the time in personalizing your email to highlight the benefits that apply to the reader. Make your first email something that entices the reader to know more, not a tell-all. Words like “tips,” “data,” and “study” often have a high email response rate.

To increase email response rate in your next email marketing campaign, dedicate enough time to researching, personalizing, formatting, and writing your email for the reader - or at least personalize it enough that it seems as though you wrote it just for them. This will help your email stand out from the rest and encourage readers to take action and reply.