Open Rates are Boring
You may have seen notices from your CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) that email open rates were being impacted by changes in deliverability.
This begs the question … are email open rates relevant? If you are not looking at your open rates, then no, they are not relevant. AND you should be looking at email open rates.
Your email open rate tells you how many people have opened your email. Specifically, I'm talking about newsletter emails and the emails you (should be) consistently sending to your list to stay in touch.
On your CRM the number is shown as a percent of the entire list you sent the email to or as a distinct number.
A ‘good’ open rate varies by industry, in general, 18 – 20% is a good rate. Some industries, like the non-profit sector, have a higher average rate of 25%.
Your open rate is on the broadcast or email dashboard. Now that you know where to find your rate, what does it mean?
At its core, it illustrates whether or not your subject line and content are interesting to your list. The higher your open rate, the more people are opening your emails. My open rate averaged over 6 months is 30%. That tells me I am creating content and using subject lines that my list is interested in.
Other areas that impact email open rate:
picture
writing style
CRM
target market
this is not an exhaustive list ... it is a list of common areas that affect open rates
If your open rate is low, start by checking out your content. Your topics may be off.
You can do some research to determine if the topics are off. You may need some help writing interesting subject lines. You may need someone to edit your emails rather than just sending them out without a review.
If you don’t know your open rate, you cannot make decisions based on the realities of what is happening. Make it a practice to check your open rate every week or month. Stay in touch with your open rates so that you can see trends. Then take advantage of upward trends, and keep doing the things that keep your list opening emails.