Upgrade your Cyber Monday Email Open Rate

You’ve done all the tough work of adding leads to your mailing list. You crafted a killer email that not only looks beautiful but gets your message across. You’ve sent the email off to everyone on your list but… no one opens them. Increasing your email open rate can be a tricky thing.

Around the holidays, marketers spend hours building new mailing lists and creating perfect emails. Therefore, it’s also important to invest time into making sure that your intended recipients actually click to open your email.

Just in time for Cyber Monday, we’ve rounded up our top recommendations for how you can increase email open rates with the goal of converting your mailing list into sales.

Segmenting

Studies show that your segmentation leads to a good email open rate. In fact, they can improve your average email open rate by up to 39% when you begin to segment your mailing list.

Segmenting your mailing list means dividing your clients based on different variables, such as purchase behavior, location, demographics, or any category you decide. By segmenting your list, you would create different emails that are customized for each category.

So, when running a Cyber Monday email campaign, you want to be sure that your email catches your clients eye as their inbox will surely be filled with hundreds of other emails from companies, including your competitors.

When you’ve finalized your various categories, or segments, you will be able to create much more engaging subject lines and email messages. If you’re looking for a reliable email marketing tool that offers great segmentation capabilities, Constant Contact offers a variety of ways you can segment your mailing list, including by your client’s behavior, click habits, shopping activity, and more.

Timing

Timing is everything. When considering how to increase email open rates, timing is one of the most important factors to look at.

Many companies have clients spread out around the world. Therefore, it’s difficult to select one specific time of the week to send out your emails. Your email should land in the recipient’s inbox at a time when they’re most likely to see it. Studies show that weekdays at 10 am are the best time to send out your email campaign. However, your 10 am might be someone else’s bedtime.

When talking about Cyber Monday emails, it’s important to get the timing right in order to maximize your holiday campaign. This is where timing and list segmentation go hand-in-hand. By creating lists based on location or time zone, you can easily send out your campaign when it’s most likely to be opened by clients in their own specific time zone.

Subject Line

As the first thing that your clients will see, the subject line is probably one of the most important factors of an email. You want to create a subject line that is at once enticing, relatable, relevant, and intriguing. Creating the perfect subject line isn’t easy. It’s something that email marketers work over and over again in order to see what kinds of subject lines clients engage with most.

There are many schools of thought as to what makes a good subject line, but most email marketers will agree on the following tips:

• Tone: Use a light, conversational tone that the reader will identify with. Make sure to also be true to your brand’s voice and style.
• Entice: Make your subject line something that ignites curiosity. This can be in the form of a question or a slight tease, but be sure not to be too vague or you risk losing your client losing interest.
• Length: The subject line should be short enough that someone can read it in a glance and grasp the entire message, but long enough to include some sort of hook or basic information. For example, “Cyber Monday Deals” is straightforward as a subject line, but doesn’t have enough to include anything enticing or your brand’s voice.

It’s widely agreed that if you nail your email subject lines, you’ll also have a good email open rate.

Write Good Content

Writing quality content in an email is more than just stringing together a few well-crafted sentences. In order to really connect with your customers, there are a few elements in your writing that you should adopt.

Good content in your emails will show that you really understand your customer base, and are more than just a company attempting to sell something. When crafting your emails, it’s ideal to write to your clients in an eye-level tone, as if you’re speaking to a friend. When using too much corporate jargon, your message gets lost in all the stiff and technical language. Don’t be afraid to use some humor in your emails in order to break the formality between your company and your client.

Aside from the way you’re writing your content, the content itself also needs to offer something of value. If you create a killer email campaign every time full of fresh content, then when holidays like Cyber Monday roll around, your clients will be more likely to open your emails since they have become used to the great content you regularly deliver. Benchmark can help you with unique and easy-to-use templates so that when you’re ready with your content, you can deliver it in a sleek and professional layout.

Beat Spam Filters

All of the above pointers are a sure way to increase your average email open rate. However, they’ll all be for nothing if you’re not taking steps to ensure that your email doesn’t land in the dreaded spam folder.

There are a few ways to make sure that your email campaign passes the spam filters:

• Avoid using words that are considered “spammy.” Terms like “free,” “click here,” and “clearance” often trigger spam filters. (Aside from that, they’re also too easy and uncreative. With the tips above, you can surely do better than that!)
• Make sure the email address and name you’re sending your campaigns from accurately represent your business and isn’t misleading.
• Include an unsubscribe option in your email. It’s always sad to see an email removed from your mailing list, however, this can be beneficial as it can mean a couple of things. Either the emails you’re crafting aren’t resonating with your client base, and many unsubscribers should act as a wake-up call to improve your email campaigns. Or, the recipient simply isn’t interesting in what you’re selling, and your mailing list just got more exclusive!
• This goes without saying, but make sure that all the recipients on your mailing list have truly given you permission to be there. Never add an email to your mailing list without having the explicit consent of the client! Otherwise, you risk your emails getting flagged.

Final Word

There are many more ways to increase your email open rate. Optimizing your preview text, improving your deliverability rate, and learning more about your audience are more great ways to get clicks on your emails. It’s also important not to forget to optimize every email you send for mobile. Many users today are looking at your messages on-the-go.

These email marketing tips and tricks can be used all year long. However, there’s no better time than just before the holidays to get started. Last year, emails sent on the day of Cyber Monday itself generated the best conversions out of all holiday email campaigns. This year, don’t lag behind your competitors. Use this Black Friday and Cyber Monday to test out new methods for your email campaigns. You might just be surprised at how much of an effect a few simple changes can have on your average email open rate.