One Obvious But Often Forgotten Improvement Which Will Increase Your Email Open Rate

Knowing the open rate of your email is obviously very, very important.  You could have the most amazing product or service, or the most amazing piece of content to pitch to someone.  If they don’t open your email and it goes straight into the trash then game over.

As a ginger gal who does a lot of outreach, open rate is a metric I always track.  Not as scientifically as some, but I know roughly how each campaign has performed so I can identify if something has worked and can implement that tactic in the future.

If you are not a numbers person, this is a good way to go about the numbers.  Let them in as a tool to help you, you don’t need to let them take over your life in order to be an effective marketeer.

The average open rate of email marketing is around 20%, for the complete beak-down go here.  These are stats for opted in email, not cold email.  

For cold email there are stats out there saying that Cold Emailers are getting 40-55% Open Rate, obviously these are the guys that have been testing and improving ready to write a Case Study!

But, this gives you a couple of benchmarks to go by in your campaigns and you can try out this tactic I’m going to give and see if it improves your open rate. It has for me!

My last two cold email campaigns had a 49% and a 55% open rate.   So, what is the secret to writing high converting Subject Lines

Be Specific

Your subject line is the action or the purpose of your email. This might sound obvious but it is surprising about how specific you can make it when you spend just a few minutes improving.

For Example:

Pitching A Guest Post

Poor Subject Line: Potential Guest Post Opportunity

Specific Subject Line: Guest Post Pitch: 3 Checks To Make Before Pitching Your Guest Post

Pitching A Service

Poor Subject Line: Building Trust & Leads For Your Business

Specific Subject Line: Idea To Build Trust & Create Leads For Your Coaching Business (55% Open Rate)

Poor Subject Line: Generating Leads For Your Business

Specific Subject Line: Will You Let Me Jump On A Call And Share My Formula For Winning Coaches 600-800 Leads In 72 Hours? (49% Open Rate)

Let me pull out a couple of specifics for you here.

For sales pitches put the industry into the Subject Line.  Not just “business”, but “coaching business”.  This makes it seem more special for the person reading the email.  I actually had one person who I spoke to (and who is now helping me promote my business), want to have a conversation just because my email was specifically directed at coaches. Go one better here and put the company name instead of the industry.

If you can include stats in your Subject Line this also boosts your open rate.  It stands out in the inbox and it is a more confident introduction.

For Guest Posting, I have trialled so many subject lines over the years it’s kind of hard to count.  But this formula always gets a good open rate.

Guest Post Pitch: [Title Of Guest Post]

Obviously this does depend on how good your title is!   But the most amazing thing about this technique is that if the person opens the email, they are effectively opting in to read more about this pitch.   

In their mind they are already warm when they are reading your actual pitch.

So many people get worried about pitching content, but the thing is, if your content is good and interesting for their audience, which it should be.. Then they want to read about it! Your content is going to add value to their website.

Be upfront and specific, your pitching content, this is the content, is this of interest?

I hope there are a couple of ideas in here for you which will help you to improve your open rate. Of course, open rate is just the first step.  And sometimes a lower open rate can have better results, for example, the 49% Open Rate above actually led to more sales calls so I will stick with this subject line.

But, once you start getting used to tracking metrics and just having a look at  the stats and comfortable with them you’ll find you will be able to make this analysis yourself and improve your campaigns, even if numbers don’t come naturally.

Good Luck!! And let me know in the comments below if you have some more tips for increasing Open Rates.  I would love to hear what has worked for you.