Email Open Rates Demystified: Best Practices and Benchmarks

📩😍 Email marketing is an essential tool for businesses today, but what good is an email campaign if your customers don’t open it? Understanding email open rates is important for any business that uses email marketing. Luckily, with a few best practices and benchmarks, you can improve your email open rates significantly.

In this blog, we will demystify email open rates, provide some guidelines on what to aim for, and offer some best practices for achieving those targets.

What is an email open rate?

An email open rate is the percentage of people who receive an email and open it. This metric is essential because if people don’t open your emails, they won’t see your message. Open rates should be a top priority for any marketer because they affect the effectiveness of your emails.

Your email open rate is calculated by dividing the number of opened emails by the total number of emails sent.

👍🏼 Some email marketing platforms, like Mailchimp, offer personalized benchmark reports which allow you to compare your email open rate to that of similar businesses in your industry.

What is a good email open rate?

The ideal email open rate is subjective and varies by industry, business size, and campaign type. For example, B2B campaigns typically have lower open rates than B2C campaigns.

⚠️🔢 However, the average open rate across all industries is 21.33%. Nonetheless, you should aim for at least a 20% email open rate. If your open rates are consistently below this level, you’re likely not hitting the mark with your email campaigns.

How to improve your email open rate?

There are many things you can do to improve your email open rates. These are some of the best practices:

1. Segment your list

Segmenting your subscribers allows you to deliver more relevant and personalized email campaigns. This leads to higher engagement rates and better open rates.

🔍📝 Create as many segments as possible based on the data you have about your subscribers, including demographics, past behavior, or purchase history.

2. Test your subject lines

The subject line is the first thing your subscriber sees, so it must be catchy enough to compel them to open your email.

🔬 A/B testing allows you to experiment with different subject lines and see which ones perform best. Come up with several versions of the subject line, and test them on different segments of your list.

📊 Analyzing the results of A/B testing indicates the most effective subject line, which you can then implement in your next email campaigns.

3. Optimize your send time

Timing is critical when it comes to sending emails.

👩👨‍💼 Consider your subscribers’ time zones and schedules when finding the best time to send emails. Test different times depending on your target audience and see when they have the greatest number of opens.

🕰️ Automating email campaigns with logic to optimize sending time can help achieve better open rates over time.

4. Monitor and analyze your results

Tracking your email campaign performance is crucial to see how well you’re doing.

🧐 Analyze metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to determine the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Use the results of these analyses to tweak future campaigns to improve results.

📈 Tracking and analyzing data will give you a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to improve your email campaigns and increase open rates over time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, email open rates are critical to the success of email marketing campaigns. By following the best practices highlighted in this blog, you can improve your email open rates, engagement, and ultimately increase your conversion rate. Remember that every business is unique and should take the time to test what works best for your subscribers.

💌 Happy emailing!