Increase Your Email Open and Click-Through Rates

For prospecting emails or marketing campaigns to inform your customers about new offers, you must maximize your chances to increase your open and click-through rates. When recipients open your email, it shows they’re interested and that your message is valuable. Discover below some tips to increase the open and click-through rates of your professional emails.

What Are Email Open and Click-Through Rates?

First, let’s review exactly what these percentages mean and how to calculate them to guide you and understand your impact on recipients.

Email Open Rate

The open rate represents the percentage of people who opened your email in their inbox. According to a 2022 study, an open rate is considered good when it reaches 20%. However, this can sometimes be difficult to achieve as it depends on multiple factors.

To calculate your open rate, divide the number of opened emails by the total number of sent emails and multiply the result by 100.

Email Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate (also called CTR) helps determine the attractiveness of the links in your email. Specifically, it’s the percentage representing the number of readers who clicked on at least one link in your message. The higher the rate, the more clients are redirected to your site.

To calculate the click-through rate, divide the number of recipients who clicked on a link in your message by the number of emails sent and multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.

Sending Frequency and Ideal Timing

Let’s dive into the core of the topic by starting with the first tips to ensure your prospects and clients open your emails. It’s crucial to choose the best time to send your email and offer an appropriate sending frequency.

Ideal Sending Frequency

If you send too many emails to your prospects or clients, you risk annoying your recipients, who will eventually stop opening your messages. In the worst-case scenario, some recipients will mark your messages as spam, and thus, they will no longer receive your emails in their primary inbox, significantly reducing the open rate.

Additionally, be aware that the more your emails are marked as spam, the more your future messages sent to new prospects/clients will automatically be classified as junk mail, further reducing the number of email openings.

An appropriate sending frequency varies, but as a general rule, it is recommended to send a maximum of one email per week (to be adjusted according to your constraints).

The Right Time to Send an Email

You know that readers have habits. Thus, they often check their emails at the same times and more regularly on certain days. For example, Monday and Tuesday are recommended for sending emails, as recipients are more connected to their inbox at the beginning of the week.

For the timing, it should be defined based on your recipients’ habits. Sometimes, it will be more appropriate to send emails:

• in the morning around 7 am
• or in the time slot between noon and 2 pm

OxiMailing helps you determine the ideal time to send your messages using Artificial Intelligence! Based on your content and recipients, it will suggest 3 ideal periods for sending your campaigns to maximize their results.

Your Email Subject Line: A Critical Factor

The first thing your reader sees is your message’s subject line. This element will influence whether or not they want to open the received email. Three criteria must be met to encourage opening the message.

A Coherent and Personalized Subject Line

The subject line should directly address the prospect or client. We recommend writing a personalized subject that addresses the client’s needs in a few words. The more coherent the subject line, the more likely the reader will want to open the email.

OxiMailing allows you to personalize the message and its subject line by incorporating, for example, the recipient’s first and last name. This automatically helps improve your open rates.

An Impactful Subject Line

Use impactful words that make readers want to know more, such as “Last Opportunity” or “Take Advantage…”. These keywords are essential to entice readers to read further.

A Clear Subject Line

Finally, the subject line should be clear and concise. Your challenge is to write a subject line that contains 4 or 5 words, while directly conveying clear information.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, OxiMailing can automatically generate the most suitable subject line for your message to maximize the results of your email campaigns!

Placement of Links in the Email and Offering a Clear and Visible Link

This time, it’s all about layout. To increase click-through rates and encourage readers to click on the links available in your email, you need to place the links correctly.

By choosing the right template, you ensure that clickable links are correctly placed to encourage the reader to click on them. For example, it is not recommended to position links at the very end of the message, as many readers will never see them. This link should be visible in the first part of the email.

OxiMailing allows you to create “CTA” (Call to Action) buttons that will encourage your recipients to click within your message!

The Importance of the Sender’s Name and Address

To increase the chances that your message will be read, do not neglect your name and email address. The recipient will be more attracted to an email that comes from a specific person within the company.

That’s why many brands personalize emails by sending messages from an employee’s email (real or not). Using a first name in the sender’s name allows for a warm exchange and strengthens proximity. It is obviously necessary that the company’s name is present in the email address to make the message identifiable and reliable. The email address you use should be identifiable by the reader. Indeed, readers pay attention to these details and mark messages as spam if the sender’s name is unknown to them.

Maximize Your Chances for Email Delivery!

For an email to be read, it must be properly delivered to the recipient’s inbox. For example, your message should not end up in the spam folder as mentioned earlier.

Be aware that nowadays, email inboxes operate with automatic anti-spam filters that classify certain emails directly as spam. To prevent your email from being classified as spam, avoid using “spam words” like “PROMO” in uppercase, for example.

Also, be cautious with shared IP addresses, as this increases the risk of being considered spam. A shared IP address can have a degraded reputation, as it only takes one negative action from a user to harm all those who use it. Using dedicated IP addresses is highly recommended.

Don’t Neglect Database Quality!

It’s important to have an email database that’s clean and regularly maintained. Use an email cleaning tool and have your list analyzed regularly to avoid blockages.