Three tips & tricks to boost your average open rates for email marketing campaigns

Email marketing is one of the most impactful strategies to acquire new customers and nurture leads. Marketers report email is 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined! So we've collected a few tips and tricks for how to make sure your emails are hitting the inbox, and being read, every campaign.

First, what is a good open rate?

According to a Mailchimp report, the industry average open rate is 22%. But this can vary depending on your business or domain, e.g. non-profits usually average over 30%. Overall, 15 - 20% is a good open rate for marketing / sales emails. The more personalised the content and the better the timing, the higher the open rates.

Write catchy attention-grabbing subject lines

Pull out your most topical, funniest, most shocking email titles and see the difference! Here are some things you could try to use in your subject lines: Using first names Headline news Emojis Ask a question or for help Our rule of thumb is whatever sparks curiosity, and doesn't result in an unsubscribe, is likely to boost open rates!

Time your email marketing campaigns

When do most people check their email inboxes? Sending your emails at a practical and non-stressed time for your audience is a great way to improve deliverability. The best time to send your email campaign is: 6 AM: If you want them to be reading it first thing in the morning, over their breakfast, or on a commute to work. 10 AM: Deliver if it's work-related, or if reading it would be best done in the office / at work. 12 PM: Sending a whimsical or topical email which people could debate about over lunch? Emailing at lunch might be the time for you. 8 PM: This is the latest we'd recommend sending an email. Always send emails during daytime (according to contacts’ timezone) to ensure good open rates.

Make sure you're only sending emails to real accounts

Over time it's very easy to accumulate email addresses in your database which add to the number of recipients, but not the open rates for your emails. The more emails you send to untrustworthy or inactive accounts, the more likely you are to get flagged as a spam sender yourself. Instead of paying for a higher tier of email sends, consider turning on our email verifier to clean your databases for you. This way you can rest assured your databases are clean without sending on storage and campaign sends.