Three Steps to Better Open Rates

Hot to get better open rates for your emails
Ever wonder why your email open rates are low even though your email list is made up of people who willingly subscribed to receive your emails? Here are three tips to get subscribers to open your emails:

Write better subject lines. Subject lines give people a reason to open emails; keep it short – use no more than 60 characters (and there’s never a reason to put your company name in the subject line if the email is coming from your company). Also, get to the point; the subject line should either be informative or action oriented. Coupon Inside – 50% Off Sale Ends Tomorrow” is a good example of a subject line.

Emails should be “peep friendly”.
Outlook, Yahoo! Mail and most email clients today provide a ‘preview’ function so that people can see if the email is something worth opening. Your emails should be ‘peep or preview-friendly’. A nice decorate header is attractive, but most email previews will block images to protect recipients from malware and other undesirables. If your email header is above 120 pixels high, your recipient may not see a thing when they preview the email because the image will be blocked – the next step for this type of email will probably be ‘delete’ or ‘ignore’.

Design emails for smart phones.
More people are reading emails via mobile device (Blackberry, iPhone, etc.) Two things you can do to get started are, 1. refrain from using header images or keep them at a reasonable size (see tip above), and remember to hyperlink all images and use ALT text. 2. Get to the point of your message as soon as possible – declare important information or call to action right away, and use shortened URLs to lead your subscribers to more information.

An interactive marketing professional should be able to guide you towards making your emails mobile and e-friendly — and as always, we are here to help!

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