Are you always wondering why you aren’t able to make more sales?

Have you tried everything from improving the user experience on your website to improving the actual product and still nothing seems to work?

Did you ever think if your customers are actually opening your emails?

If you didn’t, I might have rightly identified your problem.

The problem doesn’t lie in your product or website. In fact, the problem lies in the emails you’re sending. They aren’t being opened at the first place!

Need some help? Don’t worry, man, we got you covered!

Here are 99 tips to increase your email open rates for your email marketing business. Yes, you heard that right! We indeed said 99!

So, let’s cover all the bases and come up with a plan to take your business and sales to the next level. Don’t forget us after you become a millionaire!

Tips for Warmup Session

Before entering any battle, we need to make sure all of our equipment is working properly. So, let’s do some warmup and practice to get ready for the actual battle.

Tip 1: Warm up the Email Service Providers

Before the battle is on, you need to make sure the battleground is ready to witness what you will be producing. If you’re sending emails, what is your battleground? Most certainly, the email service providers!

There are different email service providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, etc. All these platforms share one principle in common and that is if you send a lot of emails and most of them remain unopened, they immediately will start sending your emails to the spam box.

How can you beat these platforms then?

The solution is pretty simple. Don’t send all your emails at once and rather warm up the email service providers.

So, for example, if you have 10, 000 contacts on your email list, send no more than 1, 000 emails on the first day and gradually make sure the service providers are warmed up for the next bundle on the next day. You can then send 2,000-3,000 emails on the following day.

This way, your emails will be sent directly to your customer’s inbox and this will certainly improve your chances of getting a higher open rate!

Sending so many emails at once can be a tiresome task to do and tools like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Aweber, ConvertKit, Keap, Moosend, fluentCRM can help you automate your email campaigns.

Tip 2: Scrub Off your Email List

If you’re reading this article, chances are very high that you have not had much success with email marketing.

What if I tell you the main reason behind your apparent failure is sending emails to those who are not opening your emails!

What can you do? Simply, scrub off your list of those people who haven’t opened the last four to five consecutive emails you’ve sent them. But do not remove those people who have not opened the last three emails you’ve sent them. Probably another approach might work with them, eh?

It is pretty easy to scrub off your list with email marketing services such as GetResponse.

Tip 3: Segment your List

You might be very disappointed after finding out that some of your subscribers aren’t even looking at your emails. Your confusion might increase more when you would notice that some subscribers are actually liking your emails while some aren’t even opening them. Does it have something to do with coincidence-you might be wondering? What if I tell you it’s no coincidence!

The reality is that the content you’re producing is suiting the needs of only one segment-those who’re opening the emails and making purchases. So, what you need to do now is come up with a simple solution of segmenting your markets and preparing different emails for different segments.

For example, if you’re a clothing company, your segments might be men, women, teenagers, and kids. Just like that, you would increase your open rates very easily.

fluentCRM helps you segment your list based on tags and priorities which is really helpful. ActiveCampaign is also very proactive in making automatic segmentation based on the criteria you set. With AWeber, you can very quickly segment your list.

Tip 4: Build an Organic List

Sometimes, something as simple as building an organic list also helps! As your subscribers can see a familiar face pop-up in their inbox, they decide to open your emails! More opens lead to more sales! Simple math it definitely is.

Moosend can help you with getting organic leads.

Tip 5: Don’t get injured while warming up, take a break

Are you trying too hard and getting yourself smacked right in the face? First of all, I would like to tell you that it’s perfectly fine to be not achieving everything that you had dreamt of after starting this organic journey of getting more sales. Then, I would ask you to focus on your content.

Finally, I would recommend that you take a break. It’s better to take a break and come back strong rather than get injured by writing uninteresting content. Refresh your mind. Then come back and start warming up and prepare relevant and interesting content. Remember, we always have to keep our messages focused!

Beginning to craft that all-important email!

Now that you’ve warmed yourself up and have taken the necessary preparation, it’s time to craft the all-important email that will organically boost your sales. Are you ready? Let’s go!

Tip 6: Send your email from a familiar source

Never send an email to a subscriber from an unknown source. You should always use a familiar source to send emails to subscribers. This source could be your name or your organization’s name or the domain name of your website. You should make sure the subscribers get familiar with your source to increase open rates.

Tip 7: Verify Domain Name

People usually look for verified sources when they make purchases. Thus, for crafting that perfect email that will lead to your website, you should first verify your domain name as it will increase your reputation amongst your subscribers.

Tip 8: Pick Time and Day Carefully

It’s of no use if you’re sending emails during a particular time of the day or on a day when the subscriber is too busy to even check his/her notifications. Also, you might not have much success if you’re sending emails to your subscribers when they’re sleeping. Thus, you should be aware of the time zone of your subscribers and send emails accordingly.

Monitoring when your subscribers open your email is another good way to identify the best time to send subscribers emails. Also, you should notice during which days of the week your subscribers remain the most active and pick those days to target emails towards your subscribers.

Tip 9: Create a Personal Connection

The best way to increase open rates is to make sure that you are making yourself familiar to your subscribers. The best way to do that is by creating a channel through which your subscriber can have a personal connection with you.

Something as simple as using your own name in the sender option has been noticed to boost open rates significantly. Make sure your subscribers believe that they can reach you anytime.

Tip 10: Craft Mobile-Friendly Emails

These days, most people check their emails using their smartphones. So, if your emails are not mobile-friendly, you will not be able to attract the attention of most of your subscribers. Eventually, you will fall behind your competitors.

On the other hand, mobile-friendly emails will open a channel of personal communication and let your subscribers know that you’re optimizing your communication channel for their betterment. Are your emails mobile-friendly? If not, what are you waiting for?

Tip 11: Use Autoresponder

Once you’ve identified the best time to email your subscribers, you should use an autoresponder to set up automatic emails that would be sent to your subscribers during their active hours. Using an autoresponder will make your work easier and will definitely increase the efficiency and effectiveness of reaching your target segments.

You can use email marketing tools such as ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, AWeber, ConvertKit, Keap, Moosend, fluentCRM to set up your autoresponder.

Tip 12: Style Matters

You should always stick to the same theme or style while writing your email. This is important to do because once you build up a loyal base of subscribers, your subscribers will get accustomed to your writing style and the construction of your emails.

By following the same theme, you will allow your subscribers to get comfortable around your emails and they will soon start identifying with your messages. Here’s an example of a company using the same style on different days.

You can use AWeber’s smart designer to design your email templates. ConvertKit’s email designer is also a very good feature of the platform.

Tip 13: Send an Email every day

We should brush our teeth every day. We should also send emails every day. Why is that? By sending an email every day, you will be able to find out who your good or bad subscribers are.

By differentiating between the loyal subscribers and switchers, you will be able to optimize your emails and policy. So, send an email every day!

To set up sending emails every day you can use email marketing solutions such as ActiveCampaign or Keap.

Tip 14: Get a subscription to an email marketing service

These days, almost everything that we do online can be automated. Automation reduces our burden and helps us sleep at night peacefully. Automation also increases the efficiency of our work. You must know the pros of automation. Then why have not you opted for automation? I don’t get you, man.

You must get a subscription to a good email marketing service. If you don’t know what these marketing services could offer you, you should try them out on a trial basis. Most of these services allow you to go through most of their features free for the first 14-30 days. Try automation and I’m sure you will never fall out of love with it.

ActiveCampaign and Keap both have a free trial period of 14 days where you can try out most of their functions. GetResponse’s trial period extends up to 30 days. After the trial period, you can still use these email marketing solutions by paying a monthly fee, which is based on the number of contacts and the features you want from the platform.

If you have 500 subscribers only and want an email marketing service that is free of cost, you should opt for AWeber. Platforms like ConvertKit and Moosend allow you to use most of their services for free, even if you have up to 1000 subscribers.

Tip 15: Subscribe to your own email list

We have often sent ourselves a test email containing our projects before sending out the final project to our professors. Our comfort lies in double-checking everything. It is often the case that we get out of our comfort zone when we start to run a business and forget these good habits. Let’s travel back to our childhood and bring back the good practice of double-checking.

You should subscribe to your own email list for double-checking everything that you’ve crafted. This way, you will be able to perceive the speed and deliverability of your emails and also find out how the content looks like in an actual email. So be your own guest!

Subject Line- The Most Powerful Tool

The first thing that most people notice in an email is the subject line. For mobile users, the subject line is the part that is visible in most cases in their notification panel. Constructing an engaging and meaningful subject line is very necessary to increase your open rates. How can you do that? Well, it’s not rocket science!

Tip 16: Casual Subject Lines

Customers might think you’re from a big corporate business if you use formal subject lines. Most customers don’t prefer formal conversations in emails. Thus, try to be casual and friendly in the subject line. Make 2-3 subject lines and pick the one that yields the best result.

How do you test for the best result? Well, it’s quite simple! First, use different subject lines for different small samples taken from your target group. Then, find out which subject line is providing you with the best results!

Don’t write “Important Information about Product X” and instead write “Get 20% off on product X today” in the subject line.

Tip 17: Use Subscriber’s Name in the Subject Line

Often people open emails when they see their name pop-up in the subject line. This strategy works best when you’re sending emails to someone who might not know your company directly. Once people see their name in the subject line, they immediately open the email to find out if the email is from their family or friends!

If you have good content to back up your idea of using your subscriber’s name in the subject line, you should definitely do that. People also familiarize themselves more with companies that use the subscriber’s name in the subject line.

Tip 18: Use Lowercase/Title Case

If you write your subject line like this: “REMINDER”, people will think that the email is from a corporate agency or big business. So, you should go for a subject line typed using the lowercase letters, or else you might also try writing the subject line in the title case. I would suggest that you try both these options out to check which one best serves your purpose.

Here’s an example of a company using the title case in the subject line. Notice that they didn’t put the first letter of the preposition in the capital, which is a good practice.

Tip 19: Ask Personal Questions

“Have you failed to lose weight even after maintaining a strict diet for 4 months?”

Questions phrased like the one written above is bound to attract the attention of people maintaining a diet and failing to lose weight. Just like that, you can get the attention of your target group by asking them personal questions.

Once people see that you are asking them something relevant to their life, they are more likely to open your emails, even if just out of curiosity.

Tip 20: Use numbers

“3 out of 4 people have failed to pass this test, can you do it?”

Using numbers or statistics in the subject line often prompts people to find out which category they belong to.

Curiosity is good for your business, and it should be your primary goal to increase curiosity amongst your customer base.

Numbers can definitely be a good way to generate curiosity. When people see numbers in the subject line, they might open that email to see what the numbers are trying to portray, which should be good news for you.

Tip 21: Use Humorous Words

“Don’t lie to your friends! You’re definitely not going outside on a Sunday with your family,”

Using humor as a mechanism to make people engaged with your email is a good way to increase your open rates.

Humorous words not only make people laugh; it also allows people to see that you’re trying to form a personal bond with them. We all love people with a good sense of humor.

Humor is something that we all admire, but we’re very hesitant to use it in our business. I bet you have never used humorous subject lines because you were scared that it might not be a formal communication approach.

I would suggest you now let go of your fears and use your humor to construct an interesting subject line. Remember, it’s always great to make things dynamic.

Tip 22: Make Subject Lines Short but Effective

We all know that our subscribers don’t have the time to go through our long subject lines. Thus, most of us try to use a short subject line. At times, even though the subject line is short, it doesn’t result in anything fruitful.

The problem is that your subject line albeit short is often not effective. For example, a subject line such as “Did you know” albeit short doesn’t really engage people as they are unlikely to go for further information by opening that email that has a vague subject line.

By using a subject line such as “10 lucky winners get $100 off” you can make your subject line both short and effective. People often want to know what’s in store for them. Thus, an effective subject line should be a glimpse of what is to come in the email so that people can opt for opening the email.

Tip 23: Make use of Email Subject Line Tester Tool

Even the best of us need help from technology once in a while. Technology, used properly, can be a great asset to all of us. You should also use tools and technology for your own benefit.

A great tool for you could be the Email Subject Line Tester Tool. This tool will let you know the score of your potential subject line. The best part about this tool is that you can modify your subject lines and see if your overall score has improved or not. Are you still sitting still? No, that’s not the way to go!

Try the email subject line tester tool, now!

Tip 24: Try Negative Subject Lines

“That’s it! I’m pulling the plug”

People often respond better to negative words than to positive words, and you can also use this strategy to increase your open rates.

You can potentially use negative subject lines to direct your messages to people who haven’t opened your emails recently.

This way, you will be able to regain your lost customers and you might get through to new leads and avenues from your old customers.

Tip 25: Add a TL; DR in the subject line when necessary

People always like heads-ups. If you’re writing a big email, you should mention “TL; DR” in the subject line so that people know what they’re in for.

This is helpful to make communication possible and build a sense of trust between your contact and yourself.

Tip 26: Use FOMO in Subject Line

People hate missing out. Something like “Don’t miss out, only XYZ offers left” is bound to get people’s attention. FOMO can be a good way to attract people’s attention.

The subject line is the primary source of interest for people. If you create a sense of fear in people in the subject line, they will be more inclined to open your emails.

Tip 27: Respond to un-opens by changing subject lines

Often people don’t open your emails because of the unattractive subject lines you use. You can find out if that is the case for the subscribers who have not opened your emails.

Simply try out different subject lines for people who haven’t opened your emails. Try to find out if some of these subscribers are responding to a changed subject line.

Remember, it’s a busy world and people might not have had the time to check your emails. It’s okay to tweak things a little bit.

Email Body- The Place where you mean Business

The body of your email is the part where you actually mean business. Everything depends on what you do with the body of your email. Future open rates and sales depend entirely on the content you provide and the value you add to their life. Are you ready to be more than just a marketer? Let’s go!

Tip 28: Focus on the First-100

The first 100 characters (not words) of your email’s body is very important, as this is the part that is visible in the inbox folder of email provider services.

Subscribers usually look at the first hundred characters first and decide whether they should open the email.

To increase your open rates, you need to be very precise in writing the first 100 characters of your email.

People will log into their Gmail accounts, notice your precisely written first 100 characters without opening the email, and decide to finally open the email! Below is a picture in which the first 100 characters are marked.

Tip 29: Introduction is the key!

By now, you know that mobile users are very important for your company. These users decide to open or not open your emails based on what they see in their notification panel.

If your email has an engaging introduction, people are more likely to notice that in their notification panel, which might then lead to more email opens.

Make sure you write an introduction in a way that tease the subscribers to open the entire email. Disclose a piece of the puzzle you’re offering in the introduction to entice your contacts.

Tip 30: Send text-based emails

You must aspire for getting your email into the inbox folder of your subscribers.

It doesn’t do any good for you if your email lands in the Promotions tab of the subscriber’s email account.

Whenever the email service providers notice that you have incorporated image attachments in your email, they send the email automatically to the promotion tab.

To avoid getting filtered out to the promotions tab, you should stick with text-based emails.

Tip 31: Content matters! A lot!

That you should provide valuable content shouldn’t even be on this list!

It is a must! You must provide valuable content to your subscribers.

You need to ensure that your content can have an impact on the lives of your subscribers.

Your email should not be just another promotional email!

It should have valuable and informative content which the subscribers can use to acquire knowledge on something.

In the midst of maintaining formatting and everything, don’t forget to provide valuable content to your contacts.

Tip 32: Cookies in Hands!

You should always reward your subscribers with cookies!

How can you do that in a digital world? Well, the answer is pretty straightforward. You keep them engaged and wanting for more!

Isn’t that just what a cookie does?

In the first introduction, provide value to your customers in some form or the other. Make sure your contacts are awaiting more cookies or values.

Tip 33: NVS (Nurture, Value and Sell)

This is a methodical approach that you can follow while writing your email’s body part. NVS means Nurture, Value, and Sell.

At first, you should nurture those who have opened your emails by educating them about your organization and the information they need to know. Let your subscribers take baby steps at first!

Then, you should follow up this phase by providing relevant value to your subscribers so that they become more engaged with your email.

Finally, you should try to close the deal by making your sale. NVS is very S (Simple!), isn’t it?

Tip 34: Incorporate accurate information

Your email must not contain any information that is inaccurate. Building a base of trust is very important.

Providing inaccurate information creates a sense of mistrust and increases the possibility of generating negative word-of-mouth.

So, always double-check all information before sending an email.

Tip 35: Don’t overuse subscriber’s name

While it’s good to mention your contact’s name once or twice in an email, overusing your subscriber’s name is not a good idea.

For important emails, you can mention his/her name once in a while. If you’re not sending an email where you require a reply on an urgent basis, it’s better to avoid not using the contact’s name more than twice.

Tip 36: Write short email copies

People prefer reading short sentences. You should also write emails using short sentences.

Short email copies will make it easier for people to read your emails and understand your message.

You can also use large fonts in your emails to make them more visually appealing and readable to your subscribers.

Tip 37: CTA (Call-To-Action)

If your email doesn’t have a CTA or Call-to-action button, then the whole purpose of sending an email is defeated.

Are you sending emails just to interact with your customers? Definitely not!

Your end result is of course making sales and getting more people to sign up!

If that’s the case, you should include buttons that can redirect people to the action you need them to perform.

Thus, incorporate a clear, visible, and visually appealing CTA button in your emails.

Tip 38: Entice Subscribers

You should always aim for keeping your subscribers in the loop, and for that, you should always keep them guessing.

To achieve this feat, you should try to tease your next email through your previous one. In this way, your subscribers will at all times feel involved and engaged.

So, keep your subscribers waiting for your next email!

Tip 39: Practice Relevance

Always send relevant emails to relevant people. Do not promote iPad to plumbing companies.

You might attract a small group of people if you target an irrelevant group with an irrelevant email.

But you should aim for the stars, and for that practicing relevance is mandatory.

Tip 40: Keep things open-ended

Your subscribers should not see your emails as close-ended. Rather, they should always feel they’re in the loop.

Your subscribers should at all times feel that they have something to contribute.

Make your subscribers feel involved. Ask them to add their personal opinions, comments, suggestions about a topic. Keep them hanging for your next move.

Tip 41: Use Conversational Tone

“Dear Patrick, I hope you’re well. Do you know our company has started a campaign where you can participate and win prizes? It’s a competition where you get to showcase your talent and aptitude,”

“Hey, Patrick. What’s up! To tell you the truth, I’m writing this email because I have an idea using which you can win $1000. Are you in? It’s a simple test, so let’s get started!”

For the emails listed above, you can understand which one seems more lucrative and the reason or math behind that is quite simple. The latter uses a conversational tone.

Remember, you’re not writing a letter! So, try to always make conversation via your emails.

Tip 42: Write to one, not to many

Many people feel overwhelmed when they see that they have to write to thousands of people on their contact list. My suggestion would be to not think along this line.

You should always think that you’re writing to one person at a time. Modify your email according to what that one person might like.

This way, you won’t feel overwhelmed and a channel of personal conversation would be opened.

Tip 43: Provide Case Studies

People always like listening to true stories or testaments. But be alert!

Do not send any email which has an unverified story.

Do not misuse the Internet.

Provide accurate information and create a bond of trust between you and your contacts.

Tip 44: Ask Questions

Ask questions that might be relevant to your customers.

Encourage them to hit the reply button and send their answers.

Customers are usually more inclined to answer “Did you know’ or “What are your thoughts” types of questions.

Tip 45: Leverage Trending News

Trending news is always a good place to start a conversation with someone.

Make conversation with your customers using a trending piece of news about something related to your industry.

Ask them their opinions on that piece of information. Collect and gather information about how your subscribers think.

Make inferences and deductions based on your customers’ answers and approach them with a modified approach.

Everything is simple if you make it to be, isn’t it?

Tip 46: Take the Marketing Approach

People often try to take the selling approach and usually try to push their products to customers.

They become frustrated when customers don’t respond to their sales approach.

But is the approach to be blamed here? The answer is definitely yes!

Your copies should be focused on the interest of the customer. You should create value for customers to capture value from them in return, which is the motto of the marketing approach.

So, don’t go for the pushy sales approach. Rather, take the pulling marketing approach instead.

Tip 47: More than one Action button

People often think that one CTA or Call to Action button is good. But most of the times, more than one call to action button works much better. Why?

People often get lost reading an email and forget to take an action. If you have just one CTA button at the top or the bottom, people might miss it, and thus the purpose of your email might get defeated.

More than one CTA or simply Action button makes people remember that they need to take proper action in response to your email. But make the action buttons all revolve around the same topic.

Tip 48: Proof-read for Grammar

We all have impeccable grammatical skills. Thus, we don’t think that we need to “waste” time proofreading our content. But often a minor mistake can lead a customer to believe that we are an unprofessional company.

Thus, you should always make some time for proofreading your emails. If you don’t have enough time to proofread your content, you can use an app such as Grammarly. But proofreading it yourself yields the best results more often than not.

Tip 49: Not too small, not too big

The most important thing about an email’s body is that it needs to be very precise and to-the-point. You have to get the length of your body right.

Don’t make the email’s body too small for people to infer anything relevant.

Do not make the email’s main text so long that people can’t decode anything out of it.

Be precise and write concisely.

Tip 50: Take a psychological approach

Exploiting user behavior is very important, and that is known as a psychological approach. You should try to always exploit the behavior of your users. Use different approaches to understand their psychology.

You can even include a psychological test in the body of your email. Your subscribers will explore the tests and you will get your coveted results in this way. So don’t be afraid to mix some psychology.

Tip 51: Include Authentication Certificate

You should use an email authentication system and include the authentication certificate in the body of your email so that your subscribers can verify your company identity.

This is a very important thing to do as your subscribers might consider you to be a phishing site if you don’t include an authentication certificate in your email.

Tip 52: Sharing is Caring

The motto of your emails should be “sharing is caring”. What does that mean? The meaning is very simple here. You should encourage people to share your emails with their friends. More engagement will lead to more open and hopefully more sales.

So, ask your subscribers to care for their peers by sharing your emails. Try to reward those people who refer your website to others. This way, you can build an organic list with higher open rates.

Tip 53: Make subscribers feel uncomfortable? What!!

You might have read everywhere that making your subscribers feel comfortable is the only way to increase open rates.

But is that always the case?

We definitely don’t think so. In fact, we believe getting people out of their comfort zones is sometimes a more appropriate strategy. How so?

If you write something like “Don’t open this before 5 p.m.”, it is more likely that your subscribers will open your emails. Messages like this will get your subscribers out of their comfort zones. So, making subscribers uncomfortable also works.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Tip 54: Build Up from the Previous Email

If you have noticed that someone has opened your previous email, you should always build up from your last email sent to that person.

You can ensure consistency and continuity in this way.

Also, your subscribers will wait for your third email and will want to know the end of a story which will further improve your open rates.

Tip 55: Geolocation Usage

If you want people to visit your facilities, mention your location in the body of the email.

A better way is to incorporate a google maps link of your physical store in the body of the email.

This way, a customer can look up the distance from their house to your store and actually visit your store.

They might also pop up in your store one day while passing by that road.

Including a physical address in the email also adds to your reliability. And more reliability means more opens, right?

Tip 56: Develop a Brand Persona

Your brand should have its own personality. The best way to develop your brand’s personality is by writing the unique features of your brand in the body of your email.

Try to maintain a unique brand persona throughout the body of your email. Mention what makes your brand stand out and why your brand deserves the attention of your customer.

Branding done right is sales done right, right?

Tip 57: Use Power Words

Often power words are the charming aspects of your emails.

So, words like “Buy 1 get 1” or “Hurry up!” or “Available only today” can make people make desperate to grab your offers which might lead them to open your emails.

Make use of power!

Tip 58: Don’t do this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don’t do this!!!!!!!!!!!! What not to do?

What we have done in this tip?

But what have we done actually?

Getting confused? Nothing to be confused about here.

We have actually used a lot of exclamation marks in this tip. You shouldn’t do this in your email.

People don’t like to see a lot of exclamation marks in the same place or dispersed around the body of an email.

Just like you didn’t like all those exclamation marks, or did you?

Nevertheless, your customers won’t like it and that’s all that matters.

Tip 59: Be Proactive

You should always use some tool or talk to some people about the email you’re going to send.

You could also spend more time for yourself and try to analyze your email from your subscriber’s point of view and in this way, you can be proactive and make necessary changes to your email.

Being proactive will reduce the time you need to reengage and disengage in the process of constructing your email time and again after not getting enough responses.

It’s better to do things right the first time.

Tip 60: Be transparent

If you’re asking your customers to verify their email, mention why they need to verify their email in your email’s body.

This transparency will help your customers to see you as a trusted source. Also, your customers are more likely to verify their emails when they know the actual reason why they need to verify.

Being transparent always works!

Tip 61: Mention day or date

Start off your email by mentioning the date or the day you are sending your email. This is important because people will acknowledge your efforts if you make it seem like you’re thinking about them on that particular day or date.

People are also more likely to identify with the day or date you mention in the email, and for some people that day or date might be going so well that they decide to make a purchase from you.

Simple things will often lead you to the best of results.

Tip 62: Use ()

Mentioning something very important?

Use ()

Why?

People tend to focus more on the symbols you use. Thus, if you put something in brackets, it is highly likely that people will see that and make the decision to take the action you intend them to take.

Putting a bracket in something important within the first few characters of the body of the email is often a good strategy to increase open rates.

Tip 63: Follow Twitter Strategy

When Twitter was introduced, everybody thought the word limit would be its downfall. Now a lot of time has passed by and we can now see that Twitter has been the most embraced platform by prominent figures. Why is that? People like to read short paragraphs and make their own deductions.

You should also make your messages precise. If you can deliver your messages within 150 words, you should not aim for stretching your message beyond this word limit.

Tip 64: Series of stories

If you’re writing a series of emails containing different parts of stories, that would be a great way to engage your customers and would definitely improve your open rates.

You just have to make sure that all the parts of the series are equally interesting and that you always end on a cliffhanger.

Also, provide a brief on what people might expect in the next part. Try to get people’s predictions and suggestions about the story.

Finally, ask your subscribers to review all the parts of a story.

Tip 65: Give them what they signed up for!

If you want cookies, and the shopkeeper gives you burgers, how would you feel?

Similarly, if people sign up for newsletters, send them newsletters. Do not send them anything else.

Verify what you’re sending and what your subscribers have signed up for. Recheck the email’s body to see everything is in place. You can use AWeber’s auto-newsletter in this regard.

Tip 66: Never say “Do not Reply”

People are often discouraged to see the phrase “Do not reply” in an email. You should never do that.

Instead, you should always ask people to communicate directly with you by hitting the reply button.

So, make sure, your email’s body asks people to reply to your emails. Don’t discourage people.

Tip 67: Use A/B Testing

Try different bodies for the same segment and find out which email body works the best for that segment.

The best way to do a test experiment is by using two options A and B and verifying which option seems more lucrative to your customers.

You can also use A/B testing for testing out different things that you’re including in your email. Email marketing services such as Moosend and fluentCRM will allow you to do A/B testing very easily.

Tip 68: Don’t be Sales-y

If you are being sales-y all the time, your customers will get tired of you and your open rates will decrease.

You don’t want that, do you? So, to increase your open rates, you should teach more and sell less.

There is a good ratio that you can use in this case, which is to teach 80% of the time and sell 20% of the time.

If your customers are aware of what you’re offering, you won’t need to be sales-y, anyway. So, in the body part of your email, try not to be too sales-y.

Tip 69: Add Videos

People often respond better to videos. You should try making your own videos.

An easy way to practice making videos is to record yourself quite a few times.

When the quality of your videos improve, people will like reading your emails and watching your videos.

Videos also have the potential of ensuring more engagement. So, you should definitely opt for making more videos.

Tip 70: Give links to FB/Twitter Page

Your email body must provide a direct link to your Facebook or Twitter page.

In this age of social media, you can’t but include these two links in your email’s body. People often look for company pages using social media sites. Thus, including links to your social media accounts save people’s time and make sure they trust in you.

Trying out Unconventional things

Up until this point, we have talked about the traditional methods that we can take to encourage people to open our emails. All the methods discussed above must be followed. But is that all? Sometimes, we have to think outside of the box and come up with something unconventional to increase email open rates. What can these things be? Let’s find out!

Tip 71: Run Contests

One great way to increase email open rates is to run content. You should mention the details of your contest in the body of your email.

Mention all the terms and conditions and rules and regulations that people need to follow.

Talk about what your subscribers can win if they participate in contests.

Discuss the amount of time it will take for your subscribers to take part in the contest.

Incorporate an action button to redirect people to your contest or, better yet, run the contest within the email itself.

These contests will make people open your emails more as they will always be craving for more competition.

Tip 72: Surprise subscribers with personal offers

“Happy Birthday to you, Jack. Here’s a 20% discount from us on your birthday. Hope you enjoy the day! Best wishes to you”- A text like this is bound to make anyone happy. We always want to be adored on our birthday and when someone is thinking about you, that always means a lot!

You should try to surprise people and make their day better with birthday offers. Let your subscribers know that you’re thinking about them.

Other things such as a child’s birthday, anniversary could be other important dates that you can use to offer people discounts. But make sure the information you gather isn’t made private by the user.

Tip 73: Send notification about favorite in-stock items

When a subscriber has made a purchase or has added an item to their favorites list, you should notify them whenever that item is in stock.

Also, you should notify your subscribers if you’re offering any discount on their favorite items.

These strategies albeit unconventional can work in your favor and increase your subscriber’s engagement.

Tip 74: Use Quizzes/Polls

People like to test their IQ by taking part in a quiz. Also, a poll works very well when someone wants to see what percentage of people are voting for or against their opinion about a trending topic.

Incorporating a quiz or a poll will allow you to first understand the mindset of your customers and it will also be beneficial for you as it will increase the email open rates of your organization.

Make sure you announce the polls or quizzes attached in the body of the email in your subject line.

Tip 75: Create a Welcome Series

People like to be welcomed in a grand way. Make sure your new subscribers are welcomed in a very grand way. How can you do that?

Create a welcome series for your new subscribers. Make sure your subscribers feel happy and engaged with the type of welcome you’re giving to them with the series you’re presenting. Encourage long-term engagement.

Tip 76: Sign up Anniversary

This is a very unconventional but effective thing to do. You can make sure your subscribers get some rewards for bearing with you for a year. It will definitely increase your open rates and might also bring back some of your lost subscribers.

People like it when you do something that portrays that you’re thinking about them. Rewarding subscribers based on their sign-up anniversary can definitely be a good way to do that.

Tip 77: Find out which phase the customer is in

Determining where a customer is in their journey is something that most companies don’t do but is something that can potentially boost your email open rates by a big margin.

There might be different phases that a customer is in and your offers should be tailored accordingly. A better marketing system will ensure better open rates for your agency.

For example, those customers who are dormant could be made to respond with a good offer but you need to first find out who those customers are. For active customers, you should try to send emails that facilitate the purchasing system. And for those who are making purchases, your aim should be directed towards reducing the post-purchase conflict for them.

Once you know your customer base according to their loyalty and activity, you can best suit your offers according to their needs.

With GetResponse’s conversion and sales funnels, you can monitor the progress of your subscribers. Keap’s pipeline tool and Moosend’s tracking tool are also unique tools that you can use to track the progress of your clients.

Tip 78: Use Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is something that we forget about. But it is a very important practice to use inbound marketing. You should make offers to those who actually want offers. Sending offers to those people who don’t want to see offers won’t result in higher open rates.

Also, you can potentially use lead magnets to generate more leads and possibly get interested people who might open your emails.

Tip 79: Monitor User’s Actions

You should always have systems in place to monitor the actions a user takes. Your system should be very vigilant but at the same time safe for the users to use.

Monitoring things such as the items a user adds to their cart will allow you to cater to the needs of the user and modify your emails accordingly. The higher personification of emails must ensure higher open rates for you.

Moosend’s device, location tracking, and reporting can come in handy here.

Tip 80: Follow statistics but don’t overdo it

We all know about the days in which there is less user activity. A lot of information could also be found about days in which CTRs (Click-through-rate) or Open rates are lower. But you should know that every person on earth can get access to this information, which is the beauty of technology.

Thus, although you should abide by some statistics which might be of use to you, don’t overdo it. For example, if someone is getting no promotional email on a day that is supposed to be a day of less activity statistically, they might even be prompted to open the one promotional email they get from you.

So, take your chance and be brave and beat data!

Tip 81: Use Song/Movie/Book reference

We identify with things we are familiar with. Whenever we try to strike a conversation with a stranger, we often talk about our favorite movies or books.

Similarly, talking about a book or a movie could be a good way to make conversation with your subscriber. Make sure that the title of the book or movie or song is mentioned in the subject line so that your subscriber can see that and open up your email.

Tip 82: Create a second lead

It’s always good to try to incorporate new things. Using a second lead is a very good strategy, as it allows you to get your subscribers hooked using an alternative method.

Some very good sources of second lead include webinars and courses. They are informational content that will definitely be useful to your subscriber and might also generate attention from the subscriber’s peers.

A win-win situation for you, it seems!

With GetResponse, you can host unlimited webinars where you can get a room for 1, 000 live attendees and you can also take two more people alongside you to present content.

Tip 83: Follow opt-in best practices

Using a double opt-in system is the best in this regard. If users are interested to read more of your content, you should ask them to subscribe to your emails.

This way, you will be able to generate organic interest in your products and people will happily open your emails, which is what we want, right?

Tip 84: Ask why someone unsubscribed

We should never give up on people who unsubscribed from our email. At least, for our research purposes, we should try to find out why someone has unsubscribed so that we can amend our mistakes.

Remember, life is a learning curve, and it’s great to find useful sources from which we can pick up things.

Some Helpful Tools- Easy to Use but very Effective!

In this age of technology, we must use some tools to our own benefit. Make sure the tools you incorporate in your system don’t do more harm than good to you. We will talk about some tools that you can potentially use. So, take a look at these tools and find out if one of these could be the missing piece in your jigsaw puzzle.

Tip 85: GMass.Co

Gmas.co is a very helpful tool to used to find out where your emails will land. To use this feature, you should add the email address generated by GMass.Co and add that to your contacts list.

After that, when you send an email to that particular address, you will be able to see it in GMass.Co if that email lands in the inbox or not.

This is a great tool to find out where your emails are landing and you can take actions depending on the answer.

Tip 86: Mailtester.com

Mailtester.com is very important, as it will let you know your sending score. If your sending score is above 9, you can consider your email to be a very good one. If not, change some words in the body part and try again.

The best thing about this tool is that it lets you verify your own conceptions about your email even before sending the actual email.

Tip 87: Glockapps

Worried about what might be the result of sending an email to your clients? You should try Glockapps first. This tool will present you with a report covering several aspects of your email’s quality. This full-fledged report will help you find your lacking and send an improved version of your email.

Improved emails will result in higher open rates!

Tip 88: BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification)

BIMI or Brand Indicators for Message Identification is a good tool to use to engage customers. Although it sounds pretty difficult to incorporate this tool, it is nothing other than the logo that you use to identify your brand. If you use BIMI in your emails, your emails will show up in the customer’s inbox with your logo right beside your name.

People usually like companies that use BIMI to promote themselves. In the image given below, the BIMI of Spotify is visible beside its message which is a great fact about its message.

Things to Avoid

We have talked about things we should do while sending an email. But there are definitely some things that we should never do and we also need to know about these things. We shall now find out what are these must-not-do things!

Tip 89: Do not Spam!

Avoid spamming at all costs! If you spam, your emails will simply disappear to the subscriber’s spam box.

To avoid spamming, you should take care of spammy keywords, domain reputation, and server reputation.

Pre-verify if your email lands in the spam folder before actually sending the email.

Tip 90: Stay away from Solo Ads

Using solo ads isn’t a good idea when you’re trying to increase your open rates. So, it’s better not to use solo ads at all.

If you really have to use solo ads, buy them from a trusted source.

Tip 91: Don’t email uninteresting or offensive things

Your emails must never contain something that your subscribers are not interested in. For example, you can’t promote that video games promote violence to someone you are trying to sell video games, as they will find it very uninteresting or even offensive.

You should also try and avoid talking about topics that are debatable, supports one extreme view or the other or raises questions.

Tip 92: Don’t buy Leads

Sending thousands of people emails won’t do you any good. Sending emails to 100 interested people is far better than sending emails to thousands who want nothing to do with your company. Thus, you should never chase after leads.

You should always try to build an organic list, and through this list, you should look for more organic leads. To generate organic leads, you can use email marketing solutions such as Keap, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, Moosend, and fluentCRM.

Tip 93: Don’t use numbers in the Sender name

If you use or date of birth or a random number in your email, chances are high that your subscribers will deem you as unprofessional or low-effort. Thus, you should never use numbers in your email name.

Instead, you should use a sender name that is easy for subscribers to memorize and become familiar with.

Tip 94: Don’t follow benchmarks set by others

Sometimes you might try to follow some benchmarks that have been set by others. But this isn’t the right approach. You should decide on your own sending frequency and segment size rather than relying on some universal benchmark or industry average practice. Benchmarks are good to understand what others are doing.

But do you really want to do what everyone else is doing?

Concluding your email

It’s very important to end your email on a high note. But how can your ending be done, right? I might have some final tricks for you. Thanks for bearing with me till the end, let’s finish on a positive note!

Tip 95: Ask your readers to add you to their address book

When you send your email, ask your readers to add the “from” email address to their address book.

If they indeed add you to their address book, your messages will reach their inbox folder which will result in more opens.

Make sure you give multiple reminders to your subscribers about adding you to their address list.

Tip 96: Occasionally include a P.S.

Sometimes, you should send your emails with a P.S. This P.S. can be something as simple as “Always remember, you’re special the way you are” or something to unveil some amazing new offers customized for your subscriber. No matter what the P.S. says, it is highly likely that your subscriber will be kept in the loop for your next email through this P.S.

Tip 97: Personalize your signature

At the end of your email, you should provide your own signature and add a short description about yourself. In the age of technology, we often look for real human beings or some story we all can relate to.

Knowing about your story or knowing you as a person will help your subscribers land in common ground and they will be more inclined to open emails from you.

Tip 98: Make realistic claims

You should always end your emails by making realistic claims. People don’t know what your company can or can’t do. If they’re relying solely on your words, try to use words that you can actually live up to.

When you make realistic claims in your emails, especially in the final section of your email, people will respond to your emails more.

Tip 99: Use an approachable tone

At the end of your email, make sure your tone makes it seem like you are approachable to the average subscriber. By doing this, you will ensure that the subscriber can immediately text you upon finishing the email.

Being friendly and approachable are vital things you need to do when you conclude writing an email. You could end in an approachable tone like the picture given below.

Email open rates are very important for any business, and following a good set of strategies always increases your chance of increasing open rates.

We personally believe that our guideline is the most comprehensive guideline ever written on increasing email open rates.

You can use different strategies depending on your company type, but we can assure you that all these strategies will definitely yield you good results.

Just be calm, confident, and aspire for more. Never settle. Good luck!