If you have a database of email addresses that you use to send out regular newsletters and sales emails to your audience, you’ve probably encountered declining email open rates when you look at your reports. This can happen gradually over months or years, but sometimes we can see a drop in open rates with every email we send. So, why does this happen?
Is your email list shrinking?
Open rates can decline if you’re not actively growing your email list. New subscribers are often more engaged and eager to open your emails, leading to higher initial open rates. Over time, however, long-term subscribers are more likely to find your emails less relevant, which can negatively impact engagement. Without a steady influx of new, interested subscribers, your open rates may gradually decrease.
How to fix this: be proactive about adding new subscribers to your list. You can do this through many different (GDPR compliant) ways, but the important thing is to keep doing it. Make sure you make it clear to your potential subscriber what benefits they will receive by signing up to your email list and what they can expect from you in terms of content and frequency of emails.
How old is your data?
If your email list has been built over years (or decades!), there’s a good chance there are people on your list that no longer wish to receive your emails. Perhaps they’re no longer relevant to them, they’ve moved on to other things or they’ve just become busy and don’t have time to prioritise reading your emails.
How to fix this: consider refreshing your data by removing non-responders in your email list. This has multiple benefits as you’ll not only reduce the size of your database, reducing your email marketing software costs, but you’ll also have a more engaged audience which will always be good for business. Think quality over quantity.
Same old, same old
Do you send the same email format out every time. If you do, your audience could be experiencing content fatigue. They’ll see your email land in their inbox and think to themselves, ‘oh it’s that company, trying to sell me XYZ again’. They’ve seen it a hundred times before, so there’s a good chance they won’t open the email to read your content as they feel they already know what it’s going to say.
How to fix this: mix things up a bit! Whilst it’s good to retain some degree of consistency with our email communications like sticking to a schedule and using the same ‘From’ name and address, it doesn’t hurt to add a bit of creativity with your subject lines and content. Something out of the ordinary is more likely to get more attention. Crafting the perfect subject line for your emails is something we’ve covered here before, but to summarise: keep it short (think mobile screens), ask a question, personalise the subject (include the recipient’s name, for example) and don’t give the game away – create some intrigue and give them a reason to open the email to learn more.
Bonus tip! If you’re still struggling to maintain a healthy open rate, why not ask your audience what they want from your emails. Send out a survey with a few key questions that will give you valuable insights that could improve your email marketing efforts for the future.
So, if you’re experiencing declining email open rates, be sure you’ve reviewed your database, your list building strategy and taken a fresh look at the content you send out each time. Is your audience no longer interested in your content? Is there more you could be doing to keep your audience engaged?
Have you successfully increased your open rates? Let us know in the comments!
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