There it is, another email in your inbox. Do you immediately hit delete, open it and then delete or open and read it?

If you opened the email, that’s at least a good start for the company that sent it to you. In a recent study MailChimp discovered that open rates ranged from 93 to 0.5 percent due to many factors. If you’re one of the companies getting open rates in the 0.5 percentile you may feel a little dismal about your email marketing efforts.

But have no fear. We have a list of legitimate practices that might boost you into a higher bracket.

Subject Line
One small group of words that stands between you and the target audience. Make sure the subject line stands out, informs and does not contain any of these words: help, percent off and reminder. MailChimp tells us they trigger spam so it’s best to avoid. Ideally you want your subject line to make perfect sense so stray away from anything cheesy, salesy or lengthy. Click here to view examples of subject lines with high opens and low opens.

Relevancy
Content is still king and we think its queen is relevancy. Content has to inform readers or else it’s no good. If your emails bore you than just image what the target audience is thinking. Don’t clutter inboxes with empty sales pitches. Instead, create urgency, provide necessary and meaningful information and keep that call to action above the fold.

Email Lists
Don’t you just want to scream when your campaign didn’t send because the platform knew your list wasn’t authentic? Maybe instead of seeing red you should take a second and rethink that list. Sending to everyone and anyone isn’t going to get you more opens, never mind more business. Instead, capture your list. Have people opt-in because they are interested and want to receive communications from you. This is your target audience!

Food for Thought

1. 68 percent of email users have acted on a marketing offer received via email in the last month
2. 48 percent of emails are opened on mobile devices
3. Email marketing has an ROI of 4,300%