An update of a popular blog post from 2015

Sending an email blast to your customers doesn’t do any good if your message doesn’t get opened.  And yet even with a permission-based list of people who have agreed to receive emails from your shop, you would be doing well to get an “open rate” of 25%. It’s worth noting that this metric is no longer considered the best measurement of success, in part because some mail programs automatically open the next email in the queue. A more pertinent measurement of engagement is your CTOR, or click-to-open rate – the number of people who click on a link within your email. A slight variation on this is the CTR, or click-through rate.

No matter how you’re gauging your success, one of the best ways to improve the percentage of subscribers who actually read your emails is to give careful consideration to your subject line. It needs to be short and descriptive, preferably with a call to action or a bit of humor — just like a good print ad headline. But it also needs to help prevent your message from getting caught up in the recipient’s spam filter. According to a study by ReturnPath cited on Mailchimp’s website, about 21% of permission-based emails sent by legitimate marketers end up in spam.

It’s easy to find long lists of words to avoid in your headline, but here are a dozen that will give you the general idea:

• Action Required
• Bargain
• Best price
• Bonus
• Cash
• Chance
• Click
• Credit
• Free
• Guaranteed
• Limited-time offer
• Urgent

These are picked up by spam filters because they are often indicative of a scam or gimmick. Of course you are undoubtedly using them legitimately to encourage shoppers to come into your store. But your open rate will be higher if you don’t use words that are flagged by the spam filter bots. You also shouldn’t use a lot of capitalizations, dollar signs, symbols and exclamation points. 

Always send yourself a test copy to tweak before hitting the send button on an email blast. I’ve probably never sent out an email to our customers without going through at least 4 or 5 different test copies, making minor adjustments each time.

Sending emails with the right frequency is also important for avoiding unopened messages — or worse yet, being “unsubscribed.” Make sure that you have something to tell customers that is worthwhile, and include special offers from time to time to reward them for making your open rate above average.

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder