With the widespread increase in the number of email users, email has become an effective digital marketing channel. Compared to the other marketing channels, it is one of the most effective ways to deliver your message in front of your current and potential customers.
According to the report, email users are expected to reach 4.3 billion in the next few years. As these numbers are more than half of the world’s population, no one can deny its importance. However, to make effective use of email, having a high response rate holds the key.
What is the email response rate, and are they important?
In email marketing, the response rate is one of the salient metrics. It depicts the effectiveness of email. It also indicates whether your prospect is taking interest in the email sent or doing any action in return or not.
Besides this, response rates are an important aspect of email marketing as they facilitate lead generation or sales. They make sure that the marketing campaigns deliver the desired results and give a high return on investment. Most importantly, with the help of the response rate, you can have a clear idea about the loyal subscribers, and the people who are not interacting. As a result, you can move forward strategically.
Usually, email marketing cannot deliver the desired outcome if you don’t measure its results and learn from them. Although every business has its method to estimate the response rate, some engagement funnel always remains the same. Such as:
● Open Rates: percentage of the subscriber who opens the email in an email campaign.
● Click Rates: Percentage of the subscriber who clicks on the link or image in your email campaign.
● Response rate: Number of people who reply directly to your email campaign.
● Conversion rate: A percentage of goal-oriented action taken by your lead.
● Unsubscribe rate: How many subscribers choose to unsubscribe from your campaign.
Moreover, a good marketer knows that email response rates can vary based on the audience, content, and industry. Therefore, to improve your response rate, he always segments the email list into specific categories.
What is a good response rate, and how do we calculate it?
Unlike the click-through rates and open rate, an email response is received in a different aspect. Although the response rate depends heavily on the content, industry, delivery time, and platform, the formula to calculate is as follow:
Average email response rate = Time is taken to respond in a specific period / Number of responses in that period.
According to experts, the average email response is 10%. This rate is widely considered as a good response rate based on different metrics. However, some experienced experts suggest that the response rate can be anywhere from10% to 25%.
Reasons why emails aren’t getting the response
As a good email helps you get more leads and sales, being too generic, vague, and lengthy can ruin the chances of closing a big deal.
Here are a few reasons why emails are getting the desired response.
The email addresses you send emails to are invalid
The number one reason your email is not getting a response can be the invalid email. You might have collected emails from the internet but haven’t tested them before sending an email. Hence, you may get a bounce and not the response you are hoping for. That’s why it is vital to check if an email is valid.
Your email is too wordy and has lots of mistakes
When a prospect gets a lengthy email containing too many words, he feels overwhelmed and exhausted even just looking at it. Moreover, an email containing a typo is very simple yet a strong email cracker that can have a huge impact.
So naturally, people reject the email containing lengthy paragraphs and typos as it doesn’t look professional enough.
Spam subject lines
The subject line is the cornerstone of any email. If the email contains a spammy subject line, chances become high that the subscriber will not even open the email and will transfer it to the spam folder.
You send irrelevant emails to your leads
Although a pre-made email list saves you a lot of time, it can result in sending irrelevant emails to people that are not interested in your offer. So sending an irrelevant email to lead won’t have a good outcome, and it can also compromise your reputation.
No follow-ups
Follow-up emails are by far the most important. It builds the brand’s credulity and makes the customer feel special. Usually, when brands don’t follow up on a customer throughout their journey, it is regarded as they don’t care about the individual. As a result, the response rate becomes low.
What you can do to improve your response rate
Personalize:
In email marketing, personalization is a powerful tactic. It is an effective technique to increase the open rate and improve the overall response rate. According to the research, personalized emails tend to perform six times better, and having personalization in the subject line means the prospect is likely to open your email 26% better.
Find the right time:
Another crucial tactic to improve the email response time is finding the right time to send the email. Usually, a good marketer prefers to send emails 2-3 times a month and that too on the weekends. However, to find out the best time, you can review your data and see when your subscriber engages with the brand more often. Later you can use that information to create the next campaigns.
Create catchy subject lines:
Arguably subject line is the salient factor that can make or break your email marketing campaign. If you fail to grab reader attention upfront, you are not going to get a second chance. And prospects are likely to leave your email without a response. Here are few techniques to create a catchy subject line.
· Make sure to create a feeling of urgency
· Arouse reader curiosity
· Use social proof as to the subject line
Moreover, you can experiment with different subject lines to figure out what works best for you.
Ask open-ended questions:
It is perhaps the most effective way to increase the response rate. Therefore, to motivate the reader to respond to your newsletter or company update, end it with a question that would encourage them to write back to you. It is a proven technique that is useful in boosting the interest of prospects in your offering. So make sure to ask engaging and interesting questions at the end of each email.
Conclusion:
In an email campaign, improving the response rate is the key to success. It will not only give you a chance to capture more leads, but you can also get a higher conversion rate and more sales.
So if you want to improve your response rate, focus on sending a personalized email, finding the right time, creating a catchy subject line, and asking an open-ended question. Moreover, avoiding sending lengthy emails, spam subject line, irrelevant email and no-follow up can also have a beneficial effect on response rate.
With these tips in mind, you can make your email marketing blast more effective
