Poor email marketing open rates

A Repeat Customer Insights customer was planning a campaign but struggled with poor open rates in the past and was looking for advice.

We have these customers in an e-mail segment, but when we usually sent emails to this segment we have a very poor open rate

Open rates are a tough metric to use because they are unreliable. A mix of privacy controls, caching, and tech in-general can both inflate and repress open rates.

You have to be careful when you use them to only compare them against your other campaigns. Don't compare them to other companies or published statistics, their customers/audience/market is different than yours and will behave differently.

But if open rate the are lower than your usual open rates, that usually means the subject line and first few lines of text (preview text) could be improved.

I'd recommend split testing subject lines and even entire emails to see if you can find a winning offer.

Remember, the subject line convinces the reader to open the email.

The content convinces them to take the next action (e.g. click, buy, reply).

Ideally, they'll end up becoming a repeat buyer.

Repeat Customer Insights will analyze a ton of customer behavior data for you, chiefly around their buying cycles.

If you knew exactly when the majority of your customers were ready to buy again, you can really increase your email performance and orders just by tweaking your timing.

Eric Davis

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Topics: Email marketing

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