• Here’s a Complete HOW TO Improve Your Email Open Rate
  
  … plus BONUS tips and Summary!
  
  It will be a long email… worth the read tho.
  
  This week I was mentioned in a post where someone was asking how to increase their open rate.
  
  After leaving a message in the post, I got bombarded with direct messages asking for help, so I decided to write up a few things that will help you to understand this issue and also what you can do to ultimately, improve your email open rate.
  
  List of items I’m touching in this post:

   

  • DNS Configuration
  • Change of Email Provider
  • List Clean Up
  • Engagement
  • Custom Audience
  • Subject
  • Attractive Message
  • Multiple emails (Newsletter)
  • Email Sequence to Increase Awareness (Know / Like / Trust)
• 
  
  There are a lot of things that will impact your email open rate. Let’s visit one by one:
   

   

  • DNS Configuration
• 
  
  There are three established methods used to verify a sender’s identity. These are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
  For the most part, you just need to worry about the DKIM, although it’s advisable to configure all three mentioned above.
  DKIM stands for “Domain Keys Identified Mail” and it is a signature that ensures the emails are coming from your domain.
  
  In Active Campaign:
  1. Click “Settings.”
  2. Click “Advanced.”
  3. Click the “I will manage my own email authentication” option.
  4. Type your sending domain into the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) field and click the “Generate” button.
  AC will generate a TXT Record Name and TXT Record Value.
  Head to your DNS Host (Godaddy, CloudFlare etc)
  Then add a new record (Type: TXT)
  Name or Host: Copy and paste the information from Active Campaign under “TXT Record Name“
  Value or Record: Enter the TXT Record Value shown inside ActiveCampaign
   

   

  • Change of Email Provider
• 
  
  If you are changing email providers. You should really read ALL the tips in here.
  
  The MOST important thing to ensure a smooth transition, where you get good deliverability, is to focus on sending emails to contacts that will open your emails.
  
  The first thing to do is to apply the DNS configuration I described above.
  
  If you have less than 50K contacts, it’s easy.
  
  Slowly send emails only to the contacts that will engage with your emails. You can get this information from your previous email provider. Once completed, you can send emails to everyone.
  
  If your contact list is over 50K, HIRE a professional to help you as it is a lot more complicated and needs to be done with time and accuracy.
   

   

  • List Clean Up
• 
  
  If contacts aren’t opening your emails for over 90 days, STOP emailing them.
  
  You can backup your database and unsubscribe them from all lists.
  
  This will save you money with monthly email autoresponder fees and help with deliverability.
   

   

  • Engagement
• 
  
  You want to make sure you email engaging emails where people will not only open but will also click on the links and essentially look forward to your next emails.
  Free Giveaways and competitions are a great way to up engagement.
   

   

  • Custom Audience
• 
  
  A good “hack” to improve your open rates is to leverage Facebook Custom Audience to show an AD to people that didn’t open the emails you sent them.
  
  You can literally have a video AD asking them to open the email you sent them because it has something important inside, crafted especially for them! Super powerful!
  
  By the way, this can be automated, if you are using Active Campaign.
   

   

  • Subject
• 
  
  Although most people will tell you this is the MOST important aspect of email marketing, I actually disagree.
  
  If your actual email isn’t personal and informative, there is a very good chance the open rate will drop with time, no matter how good the subject is.
  The subject is king but the content is GOD!
  
  (sounds like something Gary V would probably say if he was an email marketer lol)
   

   

  • Attractive Message
• 
  
  The more attractive your message is, the more you will profit from email marketing, the more your clients will be back for more, the more your open rates will skyrocket 🚀
  
  Understanding your audience is KEY. A good way to do this is by leveraging from online surveys and tagging the answers against each contact.
  
  The information you collected will be then used to send more personalized emails to your audience and it will also allow you to segment them into smaller groups, so you can really talk to groups instead of sending the same message to all of them.
   

   

  • Multiple emails (Newsletter)
• 
  
  Too many emails are usually an issue, however not sending enough emails can also be an issue.
  
  If you only sent an email to a contact a year ago, there is a very good chance they won’t remember who you are, this also explains why the open rate is so low for some businesses.
  
  A newsletter is a great way to keep people updated about your and your products.
  
  I recommend my clients sending a newsletter at a bare minimum once a month.
   

   

  • Email Sequence to Increase Awareness (Know / Like / Trust)

This might come as a surprise, but there are a lot of businesses that aren’t connecting with their audience.

The “right” way to connect with your audience, is by sharing your story, how you got there, share struggles, demonstrate social proof and deliver value.

The more they know you, the more they like you, the more they trust you, the more will be willing to buy from you and open your emails, period!
BONUS:

Integrate your CRM and send your leads to your email autoresponder provider. Have all your emails sent from one location.

Use multiple touchpoints via automation and remind your contacts to take action (use SMS, MMS, Voice Msg, Email, Custom Audience)

Once you are sending multiple emails to your contacts, you can introduce predictive sending to your email marketing game. At Active Campaign, it will assist you to deliver your emails at the most appropriate time. This will improve email open rate exponentially.

Summary

Email Marketing is an art.

The more personalized the information you send to your audience, the better your open rate will be.

There are some technical aspects to this art that may require professional assistance.

Open rate is directly related to Open rate. If you are sending emails to contacts that are not interested in your emails, they won’t open them and your domain reputation will be affected. With that, your emails will land at the promotional tab or spam folder.

The secret to Increased ROI via email marketing is to use a CRM along of a comprehensive email marketing strategy that leverages automation.

Any questions? 😃

Regards,

Luis.