Hitting the send button on an email that you spent days perfecting is a wonderful feeling, but the marketer’s high is crashing down after you see that your open rate is smaller than normal.
What has happened?
First of all, it’s important to know that this happens to almost every marketer. At some point, you ‘re going to see lower than average open levels, and you’re going to wonder what’s wrong.
Second, it’s best to come to this with an open mind ready to solve a few problems instead of assuming that there’s just ONE problem. It is particularly true if you have seen lower than average open levels for a few days, weeks, or months.
Let’s take a look at four different elements of your email that can cause your open email rate to decrease, and how you can address them so that you can get back to the open rates you used to see.
1. Your Email Is Too Large
If you’ve been good in sending emails and having a great open rate, but because you’ve sent a particular email, your open rate has been packed — this may be a very easy problem to solve.
Emails sent to the Gmail address will be “clipped” when they are larger than 102 KB. Considering that Gmail has 1.5 billion users, it’s a worthwhile issue to work on solving. When an email is clipped, the Gmail user can’t see the entire email as < 102 KB of email. You need to click on the “Open Entire Email” button to load the email in your browser.
Here’s what the Gmail user sees when the email is clipped:
If a Gmail user clicks on the “View Enter Email” button, this does not count as an open email. Through practice, we can inform you that Gmail users are not in favor of clicking on the blue hyperlink. We like to have their whole email available as soon as we open it.
To prevent your emails from being clipped, make sure they are less than 102KB long by:
- Send yourself a preview for you see in Gmail to make sure the entire message is loaded without [Message Clipped] notification.
- Using an HTML sizing tool to see how big your email is.
There are a few reasons why your email may be too large. You may reduce the size of your email by deleting individual blocks from your email (text, images, spacers, etc.). For example, if you have three different text blocks right after each other and your email is being clipped, try to find out how you can fit all that text in one block.
If your open rate email bounced back to where it used to be — GREAT! This is telling you The only reason your open rate decreased was that your subscribers avoided clicking on the “Show Entire Email” button. Easy to fix right?.
If your email open rate is still really small, keep reading to see how else you can drive your open rate back up.
2. Use Too Many Spam Terms
It’s a really easy problem to run into without realizing it. When your email campaign has too many spam terms in it, email providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hello, etc.) can transfer your email to the junk folder of your subscriber. It’s their job to protect their users from spam emails that promise them millions of dollars from a king far away.
To protect their users, they use hundreds of terms and phrases as spam. Here are just a few of the terms you may use that you don’t know are generating red spam flags:
- It’s affordable
- Apply right now
- Bonus
- Click here to see
- Full access to
- Extra cash
- Promise to you
- Free, Unlimited
- Win
- Urgent, Important
- Buy Now
- Download now
- Boost sales;
- Boost traffic;
- Take action to
- Trials
- Order now
Some email hosting platforms like ActiveCampaign will run your email content through a spam check before you press send so you know your email will pass the test. Removing as many of these spam terms as you can from your emails should keep your email out of the junk folder and in the inbox.
If your email suits like a swaddled newborn within 102 KB and you’ve stripped out something that might be considered spam — but you’re STILL seeing a reduced open rate, let’s check out a few more options starting with your subject lines.
3. Your Subject Lines Is Not Doing The Job
Your subject lines only have one single job: to get someone to open your mail. Optimized with 41 characters or 7 words, they make Tweets look like full-on essays. And given how little they are, they’ve got to pack a punch to do their job.
At Techynista, we’re still checking new subject line approaches to see what’s going well and what’s not.
We’ve found out that five email subject lines seem to do well:
- The Dead-On Subject Line Offer
All subject lines focus solely on what you sell, and nothing else.
Example: Email Marketing Announcement: Enrolment is Back Open (21.56 percent open rate).
- Curiosity / The Blind Subject Line
Subject lines that make people curious about what’s inside your email And completely confused about what’s going on and needing to know more seem to do very well.
Curiosity Example: Netflix’s Massive Homepage Failure
Blind Example: Cut off (one of the best-performing subject lines in our 2019 promotional emails).
- Subject Line Self Interest
Subscribers love to know what’s in it for them if they open your email.
Example: Up to 85% OFF Our Best Copywriting Strategies
- Urgencies as Topic Line
The subject line that stresses urgency makes subscribers interested in your offer eager to open your email so they don’t miss out on a good deal.
Example: LAST CHANCE: Content Manager goes off the market in 3 … 2 … 1 …
- Relevance / Story Subject Line
These subject lines bring the reader to a story they ‘re curious about, just make sure you ‘re delivering the story you promised to tell.
Example: The Real Reason Customers Will Buy Whole Foods
Use the A / B testing tool on your email platform to see which subject lines will increase your open score. You can set your A / B test to automatically switch to the best-performing subject line after a set number of hours so you don’t have to worry about defaulting to the best-performing subject line a few hours after you hit send.
If your subject lines are right on and you still see a lower than average open rate, it’s time to take a look at your content.
Your Subscribers Are No Longer Excited To Read Your Newsletter
We know, it hurts to hear that your subscribers don’t love your content, but at the end of the day — who’s the content for? They ‘re. What does that mean to you? It’s time to find out what makes them get that little burst of excitement every time they hear a ping and see the name of your company.
Your subscribers may not be in love with your content for a few reasons. The only way to find out what went wrong is to question them. Using a survey site, you may ask them what they want you to learn. In your survey, make sure you ask clear questions and give them the opportunity to write their own suggestions.
Another way to make sure your subscribers want to read what you send them is to segment subscribers as they enter your list. Instead of having a huge master list of every subscriber you send every email to, segment your list based on how they came in.
For example, if subscribers enter or offer a specific lead magnet in your list, create a segment for them. Instead, you should make sure that the emails they get from you are important to the lead magnet or bid. It is a win-win because you’re going to learn exactly what material they ‘re interested in, and they’re going to get the emails they ‘re really interested in.
Now that you’ve been through your email size, spam word use, subject lines, and content — do you still have a lower than average open rate?
If you do, here are a few more email elements to take a look at to get the open rate back to where it was:
- Deliverability
- Sender reputation and score
- The frequency that you’re sending emails
- Tracking
A reduced open rate doesn’t mean you’ve got to give up on your plan. It just means that something is wrong, and you need to go to the research mode to figure out what it is and how to fix it.
You’ll get back to being excited to press the send button, realizing your subscribers are already happy to see your name show up in their inbox.