‘Tis the season…for email fatigue?
Peak retail trade means peak inbox activity, so it’s no wonder your emails aren’t getting opened as often, right? It depends…
While heavy retail sale periods can impact open rates, it’s usually a contributor rather than the cause.
Maybe your subject line missed the mark or the send day/time wasn’t optimal, but often there are other less obvious factors at play.
If you’re struggling to get to the bottom of why your open rates are lagging, here are the most important email best practices for a) getting your emails into your subscribers’ inboxes; and b) boosting open and click rates.
Email deliverability – if your email delivery rates are in the 90%+ range, chances are its more like sub 80%. Deliverability metrics provided by ESP’s are highly inaccurate and should be used as a guide only. If you’re unawares to the fact fewer emails are actually being delivered, your open rates can appear lower than usual. There’s a whole lot more to explain regarding this topic including shared IP’s versus dedicated IP’s so get in touch if we can help you with email deliverability.
List management –
Open rates will decline if you’re not constantly replenishing your list with new subscribers who contribute a large portion of your email engagement (80/20 rule).
Constantly emailing subscribers who don’t engage with your emails will eventually have negative effects on your overall deliverability (i.e. your emails will be flagged as Spam or potentially blocked) and in general, it’s just not a good look! You could be unknowingly annoying your audience even though they haven’t acted. Don’t be that business who gets the annual bulk SHIFT DELETE treatment when it’s time for an inbox clear out. Draw a line in the sand and if a subscriber hasn’t engaged for 3+ months (this number depends on how frequently you send), exclude them from your campaigns and design a personalised win-back program to target them instead.
Lastly, look at the methods that were used to build your email list and ask yourself is it compliant with Australian Spam and Privacy laws. If you don’t have Express consent to send marketing communications to your subscribers (i.e. they explicitly opted in), you may be able to gather Inferred consent - if - they purchased a product/service from you and the email content is directly related to that purchase. Either way, no one wins when there is ambiguity around how someone got to be on your email list. There are some grey areas with compliance laws so please send us an email if you have any questions.
Frequency & cadence – sending too infrequently can be just as damaging to sender reputation as sending too often. Once again there are many dependencies and industry and business specific nuances, the best way to gauge and truely understand what works, is to test.
Relevant content – it’s no secret that personalisation and segmentation has a positive impact on email engagement (and will also help your sender reputation) so make sure you have a robust testing program in place if you’re serious about making improvements. Remember “content” doesn’t just refer to the body of the email, it also includes: from name and from email address, subject lines, pre-headers and how content renders on different devices.
Got a question you need help answering? Reach out here.