High Open Rates - The Key To Email Marketing Success

It's very exciting when you start building your own email list, but it should be pointed out that building a sizeable list is only half the battle. You then have to ensure that when you start emailing your subscribers, people are actually opening your emails because high open rates should result in far greater profits.

In email marketing terms a high open rate is around 40% or higher and you can achieve these kinds of open rates by following three basic rules.

The first, and arguably the most important rule is to always create a compelling subject line for each and every email message you send. This is fairly obvious but it's worth pointing out that you could have the best content you have ever produced within the email message itself, or a very high converting sales offer, for instance, but if no-one opens the email in the first place then they will never see it.

So spend some time coming up with an interesting and compelling subject line. You don't want to mislead your subscribers or create too much hype about the content of the email, but you do want to create enough intrigue so that as many people as possible open your email to find out more.

The second rule is to make sure that you keep your subscribers informed and entertained. It's all too easy to get caught in the trap of sending endless sales messages in order to make as much money as possible, but this quickly becomes counter-productive because people will either stop opening your emails or will unsubscribe from your list completely.

So provide plenty of useful content on a regular basis because this will not only create trust amongst your subscribers, but it should also mean that your readers will actually enjoy reading your emails, even if you do promote a few products every so often. Therefore your open rates will consistently be very high.

Finally you should try and get into a routine with your email messages. What I mean by this is that you should try and send out emails at roughly the same time and on certain days of the week. That way people expect to hear from you at a certain time which again results in higher open rates. For instance I personally try and send out messages on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10.00AM and as a result of this my subscribers are now programmed to expect emails from me at these times.

So the point is that if you treat your subscribers to lots of useful content and create a routine where they expect to hear from you at certain times, then you can easily achieve very high open rates of 40% or more, particularly if you use compelling subject lines for each and every email message you send.