As consumers in today’s world, interacting with brands in a digital environment while shopping online, making online payments, or surfing the internet, we all must have provided our contact information to such brands for various purposes. These brands then use our contact information to send us marketing information like new product launches, discount offers, new schemes, taking feedback, and many other conversations in the form of email newsletters. But how many of us open these emails? Or even if one opens, how many of these emails do we actually read completely? Quite a few.
The open rate of email newsletters refers to how many users open such marketing emails out of the total number of subscribers. This is due to many governing factors that we are going to discuss in this blog. If you wish to increase the open rate of your email newsletters, there are multiple things you must take into consideration, like the email subject line, newsletter content, personalization, etc. Read on to know more about how you/your business can increase the open rate for their email newsletter.
What is an email newsletter?
An email newsletter is an email communication between a brand and its existing customers, prospects or leads (whoever has interacted with the brand) informing them about the latest product/service trends, company’s updates, new collection, discount schemes, and more of such conversations where the brand’s objective is to create brand recall, keep in touch and keep the audience informed.
What is the goal of an email newsletter?
While each email newsletter may have a specific goal to accomplish, for example, encouraging users to take action like visiting the website or making a purchase. The ultimate goal of any email newsletter is to ensure brand recall and ensure your audience engages with the brand. For example, you may wish to encourage your audience to make a product/service purchase through a series of emails sent to the audience, encourage them to take a free trial of a product/service, etc. To accomplish your ultimate goal (purchase, trial, etc.), you need to ensure that your email newsletter has many followers and a high open rate.
Strategies to increase your email newsletter’s open rate
Now that you have understood what an email newsletter is and what it is intended to accomplish, let’s learn how to ensure that our subscribers open our email newsletter and engage with our content.
Write an enticing subject line
The first and foremost thing that a subscriber comes across while checking out his inbox is the email's subject line. This is the most important deciding factor whether the subscriber will open the email or not. The subject line needs to be exciting, enticing, and engaging enough to evoke certain emotions in the reader’s mind, encouraging them to open the email and see what’s in it for them. This could use bold words, attractive offers, or incentivization to open the email.
Personalise emails to grab attention
Whenever one’s name is called out, they feel that people remember them or acknowledge them. The same principle applies to email newsletters. When a personalised email is sent to the target audience, the reader will feel like a company/individual is talking to them, much like a one-to-one conversation. Hence, personalise your emails to strengthen the reader's experience and make them feel that this is a personalised email sent exclusively to you.
Strategies to ensure your audience engages with your email newsletter
Now that you have understood how to increase the open rate of emails, you would not want to disappoint your subscriber with what’s inside the email. Of course, you want them to open your email again the next time a newsletter is sent. So, what’s inside this email newsletter will decide whether the subscriber feels engaged or not, and to engage readers, one needs to ensure that the content is interesting enough.
To make your newsletter engaging and interesting, read on how to put together the newsletter.
Understand what your audience wants
Before you start creating the content for your email newsletter and decide the sequence of emails, it is necessary to understand your audience. Let’s take the example of a life coach who wishes to ensure that people can improve the quality of their lives. The coach may appeal to people’s emotions like confusion about the direction of their lives, lack of satisfaction, etc., and use motivational content to encourage them to bring about a change. It may also talk about those instances where it can develop a connection with the reader and hence keep them engaged.
Use emojis, an engaging tone of voice and template
Many people try to engage their audience through email lists in today’s time, considering the competition level in the market. During such a time, if emojis are used in email subject lines or email content, it can make the content seem more appealing. Similarly, if the email is engaging or includes a storyline, it encourages people to read the complete email from start to finish. Moreover, while you design an email newsletter, ensure that the overall colours, font style, font size, etc., grab your audience's attention. Moreover, you must ensure that this is not overdone.
Offer valuable lead magnets
Many emails include valuable lead magnets, freebies, or discount vouchers to customers in return for their contact information. When you incentivise people, they are more likely to open and read your emails, and your email open rates will increase.
Make subscribers curious
Curiosity is powerful as it encourages the audience to wait for the next email. If subscribers regularly read engaging content in their inbox, they will notice every email you send. For example, you can tell a story in two parts (Part 1 and Part 2) before introducing a product/service in the story and relating it to the story's plot.
Ending the email with “to be continued..” makes them curious, and hence, they look forward to the next email communication.
Use the word ‘’free’’ to evoke a response
Power words evoke a strong psychological response in the minds of readers. For example, the word ‘’free’’ can encourage people to know more about what is offered in the email newsletters. Examples of free things include marketing checklists, social media templates, etc.
Conclusion
Knowing the above strategies will help you ensure that more people open your email newsletter and engage with its content.
Let’s Build Brands is a marketing agency in New Delhi helping firms create effective marketing strategies that boost their presence in the digital space. If you wish to know more about the services offered by Let’s Build Brands, click on this link.