Email Marketing Software Selection – The Open Rate

Choosing the right email marketing software is not the easiest process. I am not going to sit here and tell you exactly which one to choose because there are many that have features that bloat them by my standards, but you may find them useful. So, I am simply going to give you one of the features that I think any email marketing software should have as a standard feature.

This single feature is the open rate. This may sound somewhat silly, but it is actually very good analysis to have. What is the first thing you do when you open up your email? Generally, you read the titles. However, the second thing you do is open up those that you want to read. If you have emails that you do not want to read, those immediately get tossed into the delete folder or deleted permanently. From an email marketing perspective, this is a great way to see what is working and what is not working. The email marketing software should give you a rundown of what percentage of emails you are getting opened.

So exactly how do I use the open rate to benefit me?

First off, you should not just have a single number. If the email marketing software only has this, then I would contemplate looking at another. Instead, you should be able to see the open rate on each email you send as well.

The benefit to being able to see the open rate on each email is that you will find what subject lines are working. For example, if you own a car parts store you might send out a newsletter one month on rotors that you have for sale. This may have an open rate of 50%. The following month you might send one out on alternators and have an open rate of 75%. Clearly, there are at least 25% more people interested in your alternators than your rotors. You might send follow-up emails each time you have alternators for sale.

Also, the formatting of your subject line may make a huge difference. Often a mistake I see is that people will put very generic subject lines on their emails. For example, “Awesome Car Products” could be a generic subject some people would use on their newsletter if they owned a car products website. Generally, I do not have much success at this, but you might test it out yourself. The following month though, they might have “Alternators and Other Parts - 50% off”. Generally you will always find the more specific subject line to do better, but again, email marketing is all about testing so I would encourage you to try outrageous things and you may find it will work for you.

You can even get further into the analysis though. I will continue on from the example analysis found above. Now that you know that alternators are of interest and you need specific subject lines for the best results, perhaps it is time to begin very specific analysis. Instead of using “Alternators and Other Parts – 50% off”, you could use the subject “50% off On All Alternators and Other Parts”. How do the two subjects compare? Do you think that having the first word they read as “Alternator” maybe made a difference? Did the discount on the front of the subject have a bigger impact on the reader? All of these come into play in the open rate. It is something you should not ignore.

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