Getting your message across to your clients past and present and communicating with prospective customers, email is still a relatively inexpensive and effective marketing tool. Requests for information can be answered swiftly, keeping all customers well informed about your products or services. Invitations to visit your website, advertise seminars, webinars, product launch and special events can all be sent via email.

You are not the only one using this form of communication and people’s Inboxes are full of emails all trying to do the same thing, gain your attention,make you open it, read it and take action. (Surveys show low open rates with a general decrease in the market but B2B rates being 10-20% higher)

To start a conversation,create brand awareness, educate or sell your business via your emails they first have to be opened. If your open rate is nil, your emails are not read then you are never going to be able to inform customers of how good your product/service is. Monitoring your email campaigns can give you useful feedback on open rates, so if there are problems they are highlighted and you can take action to rectify them. The various email / newsletter programs use differing ways to obtain these percentages, so it’s maybe a good idea to stay with one to get a clear picture.

Some things that may affect your open rate:

• Rented lists tend to be lower than your own in house list, and an inactive or little used house list performs at a lesser % than an active list.
• B2B email campaigns have a higher % open rate than B2C.
• Email delivery systems, in general, can only track html emails, so plain text email receipt will not be counted in the open rate calculation, even if the recipient has opened and read your email.
• The email client used by your readers also affects open rate %. Outlook which is probably used more by businesses, previews the email and this is then counted as ‘open’ but web-based email readers like Hotmail, the email subject field has to be clicked which then counts as opened. (Probably a more reliable ‘open’ count and more likely to also have been read.)

The ‘from’ field is very important as people are more inclined to open email from a sender they recognise.

Some things to change to increase ‘open’ rates:

• The ‘from’ field, make this customised for maximum recognition.
• Use your brand if you have one. If you have a known brand, use it.
• If you have a more personal relationship with your readers then consider using their name.
• Be consistent in what you do. Although your open rates may be low at first because of being unknown, keep the ‘from’ field the same so people will begin to recognise you as you build a relationship. This should improve open rates.
• Be aware of spam. At the moment a lot of spam comes ‘from’ female names with no surname and this can be the first to be deleted. (Personally, as female, I find ‘from’ with male first name just as prolific and usually delete straight away. Although they might be quite genuine, I find them overly ‘friendly’ and invasive. I’m therefore very wary, as the ‘from’ field is giving nothing away).
• Customise your ‘from’ address. Most email delivery systems will allow you to customise your ‘from’ address. Some will only display the actual email address that the email has originated from.(e.g. AOL). Change your ‘from’ name in the email address also. In many cases ,email marketing software will do this automatically.
• Email personalisation when used by companies gains higher order values than generic emails.
• Campaigns can be aimed at specific customers increasing order value. Using a customer database to determine purchase history,demographic and channel behaviour allows you to personalise your emails and target your customers.
• Using the name of the recipient in the subject line of your email almost doubles the ‘open’ rate. Using the name of your recipient in your email marketing gets their attention and increases open rates.
• You can take the personalisation one step further by using where your customer lives in the subject line. There are plenty of tools available to automatically merge all the personal details together into a highly personalised email.

Because the name and subject line may be all your prospects/customers see in their Inbox, it’s important that first impressions get across as much as possible to achieve higher ‘open’ rates.

Try different things:

• Vary your subject line and check your metrics to see if it’s made a difference to your open rate.
• Keep a common element in your emails, so even if some parts of it change you have consistency and don’t automatically get deleted when your email, in the main, goes unrecognised.
• Spam filters love ‘special offer, ‘free’(and all the different ways of typing it) ‘limited time’ ‘buy now’ and usually bin your carefully tailored offering immediately, so try to keep these words and phrases out of the subject line.
• 35 or less characters in the subject line also make for better click through rates. Learn to keep it brief and to the point. Many email clients only show 30 characters so make those count, getting your message across in the beginning.
• Knowing your readers, through a good CRM, may help you write your subject lines to communicate to the different sectors. Let them know in the subject line precisely what you are ‘selling’ rather than a vague comment stating your website is updated.
• Test your email. Send a test email to yourself to check how it looks like when it arrives in your Inbox. Would you be compelled to open it?
• It may be a good idea to include a common word or newsletter name in brackets [] at the beginning of your subject line so readers can easily white list your emails.
• Consider what time you publish. Too early in the morning and they may be overloaded with the flurry of emails that have arrived and may delete to keep clear. It’s obvious from my email box that everyone thinks that between 4 and 5 in the afternoon is a good time to send! Probably not so good if you work in an office and want a tidy Inbox for tomorrow. Try different times and check your open rates to see what works for you.