10 easy ways to improve your email open and click rates

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Having a large email list is great… but not if no one is opening your emails or clicking on your links. Here are 10 easy ways to improve your email open and click rates…

One of the biggest frustrations I hear from bloggers is that no one opens their emails… or maybe the email gets opened, but no one clicks on the links!

This can be very frustrating. You’ve worked hard to grow your list and craft an engaging newsletter… and then *crickets* – aaaaargh!

Thankfully, this is a problem that has some very simple solutions. Here are 10 easy ways to improve your open and click rates…

Ways to improve your email open rates

1. Always deliver great value

This really is the number one way to get great open rates… If your subscribers know that every time they open one of your emails they will get something of value to them: great advice / insider news / solid teaching / a quick win / a bonus freebie etc., they will always open your emails!

If they know that all they are getting is an automated update of your latest blog post, they will be much less inclined to open your emails.

READ MORE >>> What to put in your email newsletter – 11 ideas to really connect with your subscribers!

2. Email regularly

If you want to increase your email open rates, make sure you email regularly and consistently… that way your readers will come to expect and look forward to your emails (assuming of course that they always deliver great value!)

It’s worth experimenting a little with frequency, days and times to work out what works best for you and your audience, but I recommend emailing once a week, on the same day each week as a good rule of thumb.

3. Write an enticing subject line

Do not make the subject line ‘My latest newsletter’ or ‘News from the blog’. This is a sure-fire way to GUARANTEE low open rates. Make your subject line enticing and intriguing, arouse curiosity and make it so your subscribers just can’t help themselves but click on the subject line to see what it means…

…but don’t go too far the other way and make your subject lines misleading and ‘clickbaity’. It’s important to make sure your email always delivers on the subject line and never disappoints your subscribers. It’s a fine line to tread, but if you make your aim to always ‘delight’ and never ‘disappoint’ your subscribers with your email, you won’t go too far wrong.

4. Write like a friend

This is so important… don’t write like a robot or like a faceless corporation, write like a real human writing to another real human… Although you may be writing to thousands of subscribers, your emails should always sound like you are writing to just one person… the person reading it!

And make your email look like an email from a friend too! Highly designed emails may look pretty and seem like a good idea, but the reality is they get less opens and less clicks because they look like they come from a faceless corporation trying to sell them something!

READ MORE >>> Why beautiful email templates hurt your business

5. Clean your list regularly

By cleaning your list regularly, you will ensure you get better open and click rates. Cleaning your list means removing any subscribers who have not opened an email from you in a long time.

If someone is not opening your emails, you do not want them on your list! Not only are they costing you money, but they are also dragging your deliverability rates down… which means some of the people who would otherwise be interested in opening your emails are not seeing them because they are ending up in spam / junk / promotions!

READ MORE >>> Why you should clean your email list (and how to do it!)
READ MORE >>> How to reactivate cold subscribers

Ways to improve your email click rates

6. Make your email easy to read (especially on mobile!)

Getting someone to open your emails is just step 1! If you want someone to actually read your email and take action on it, you must make it easy and enjoyable to read.

And remember, most people will be reading your email on their phone… what looks like a nice email on a desktop can look like a wall of text on a mobile! Keep your sentences and paragraphs short, and use headings, bullets, images etc. to break up your text.

7. Make your links obvious and easy to click

If you want people to click on your links, make them super obvious! Put them in bold and/or underlined and in a different colour to the rest of your text to make them stand out.

Don’t forget that many people are colour-blind, so just using a different colour is not enough (that goes for your blog too!)

And remember, clicking a link on a mobile phone is actually quite hard… consider putting links on a separate line to make them easier to click.

8. Include CTAs

And don’t just stick a link in your email and leave it at that… actually ask your subscribers to click the link with a CTA (Call To Action), like ‘Click to read more >>>’ or ‘Get the rest of the tips here >>>’ or ‘Want to know how? Read this post >>>’.

It’s a very simple trick, but having a CTA makes a huge difference to your click rates.

9. Don’t include too many links

But don’t go mad with links. If you include too many links, it puts subscribers off from clicking any of them! Some email marketing experts argue that you should only ever have 1 link per email for this very reason.

Personally, I think 1 is too few… partly because if your subscriber is not interested in what that link is about, you won’t get any clicks… but also because it makes your email less helpful… I find the happy medium is between 2 and 4 – enough that it gives your subscribers a few different options, but not so much as it is overwhelming.

10. Include bonus freebies

This is a sure-fire way to increase your click rate. People just love free gifts! Every time I put a bonus freebie in my emails, my click rate rockets…

And this is useful not just in that one email, but also because your click rate affects your deliverability: the better your click rate, the more likely your emails are to land in inboxes not spam.

AND it’s useful because it trains your subscribers to click your links… once a subscriber has clicked on one link, they are more likely to click on your links in the future… because they know when they do, they get real value!

Over to you…

Which tips in this blog post are you going to put into action in your next email newsletter?

Have you got any tricks for increasing open and/or click rates?

Let me know in the comments below!

More on this topic…

• A beginner’s guide to email marketing for bloggers + free challenge
• How to make money from your email list
• 26 reasons why ConvertKit is the best email marketing service for bloggers
• How to stop getting unconfirmed email subscribers
• How to create an opt-in offer that actually works: a step-by-step guide

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