What is this Metric?
An email open rate is the percentage of how many people open the email per the amount of emails sent out.
Why Should You Care?
A big function of whether your email campaigns are effective is how many recipients actually open the emails you send. If you notice your email open rate has dipped, you can then investigate why this dip happened whether it be a result of the content of your email, the subject line, or if there was an issue with your email delivery software.
You can look at this is several ways, including:
- The percentage of recipients who open
- The total number of opens
- Opens/percentage for all emails sent during a month
- Opens/percentage for every single email you send
Each of these metrics gives you insight as to what you can do to improve your email open rates.
What Does It Look Like?
What Can You Do To Positively Effect This Metric?
Creating an engaging or interesting subject line is the first step to getting people to open your emails. You want it to read as something that piques their interest without coming off as annoying or spam-like.
Next you have to keep in mind the frequency of the emails you send out to each individual recipient. It’s about finding the equilibrium between not spamming someone and not letting them forget about you. This portion is determined mainly by the market you serve as well the content of your emails.
Finally, we have the content. It has to be something that they feel obliged to look at, something they would miss if they stopped receiving it. Again, this relies heavily on your target market and those receiving your emails, but the previous theory reins true regardless.
