10 Steps to Increase Email Response Rate – 2022 Update

Know Your Target Audience

If you are struggling to get positive responses from your email list, take a step back and study your audience. For any email marketing campaign to succeed, you need to understand your user's interests.

By doing so, you will be able to send the right content at the right time, which will boost your response rate.

To help you on your journey, a great tip is to segment your audience based on location, gender, position in your sales funnel, behavior, etc.

The last thing you would want is to waste your emailing efforts by sending irrelevant messages to your recipient.

Sending segmented emails will also boost your email deliverability and encourage subscribers to engage with your email content.

So if you are looking for a higher response rate, make sure that you know exactly what your target audience wants.

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Excellent Subject Line

As an email marketer, it is crucial that you perfect your subject line to get a higher reply rate. According to this article, over 47% of subscribers or recipients open emails based on the subject line alone.

The subject is the most essential element of your email content; failing to implement them successfully will reduce your email response rate.

Before your subscribers can even respond to your email, you need to pique their interests and make it compelling enough for them to open your email.

To help you write killer subject lines, use these tips below:

Curiosity

As mentioned above, it is important to gain your recipient's attention. When you do that, it will motivate them to click your email and increase your open rate drastically. However, do not over-sell your motives while creating your subject, as it could be regarded as spam.

Urgency

Adding a sense of urgency to your email can be a game-changer as it will compel them to click and respond to your mail. Remember that you should not misrepresent your email content or the motives behind your mail.

Length

Your goal is to capture your reader's interest, so adding unnecessary details will damper your email response rate. Make sure that your subject lines are clear, precise, and contain no fluff. Lastly, stay within 50 characters or less to get the most out of your email marketing efforts.

Personalization

Ensure that your sender name is human and not automated bots. Adding this small step of personalization will boost your email open rate and increase your reply rate. For example, chris@companyname.com is better perceived compared to noreply@companyname.com. Read the next point to know more.

The best way to perfect your subject lines is to keep experimenting with them on different levels.

While you test your subject line, make sure that you keep a close eye on the analytics and track what works best for you.

Personalize Your Emails

Unopened emails the last thing you want for your email outreach campaign. To generate a higher response rate, you need to personalize your emails.

During your email marketing campaign, you need to meet the needs of several prospects in your marketing funnel. And sharing the same email content or email copy with all of them will do you more harm than good.

Instead, you should research your segmented audiences, understand their interests in your brand or company, and create the perfect email content for maximum ROI.

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Adding a personal touch to your email campaign will allow you to build a good rapport with your subscribers and make your emails look attractive. Some quick tips to help you personalize emails the right ways:

• Greet them with their name
• Create standouts
• Offer 24/7 customer service for your products or service
• Offer tips and tricks on the products they have purchased
• Suggest other relevant products

By following the points mentioned above, you will be able to build trust with your prospects, which will benefit your marketing campaign.

Use a Conversational Tone

Another great way to improve your email response rate is by focusing on offering valuable and readable content. The way you promote or showcase your email copy will determine your email response.

So if you want to boost your email campaign successfully, ensure that the language used in your copy is readable and sounds conversational. And at the same time, you must maintain professionalism but ensure that your content is not too sales-y.

Remember, poorly-crafted content will lower your company's reputation, lead to spam, be left unclicked, or even lead to your subscriber opting out of your emailing campaign.

Once you have written your email content, make sure that you read it out loud to calculate whether or not it bodes well with your marketing intentions.

You can even consider using free online tools to calculate the readability of your content like https://www.webfx.com/tools/read-able/

Have a Clear Value Proposition

For a higher response rate in your email marketing campaign, you must show a clear value proposition.

When you create emails, you must clearly outline all the benefits and features so that your recipients know exactly what they are drawn into.

Creating content that your prospects want to read is the best way to increase your reply rate and even improve your sales through your campaign.

Especially when you are sales prospecting, being clear on your email intentions, such as discounts, coupons, new products or services, etc., is crucial.

By doing so, marketers will also get an opportunity to create CTAs throughout the mail where the reader can take action.

When writing a value proposition, you must offer differentiation of your products or service amongst your competitors. You can also consider outlining some critical aspects of why the reader should choose your product.

Keep Your Email Content Brief

Today, most readers have a limited attention span and are very quick to skip to the next point if not satisfied.

That's why you must create emails that can be read in less than 30 seconds and are more likely to increase your email response rate.

No matter the business, having a concise email or powerful opening sentence will grab your prospect's attention.

Even though you may have a lot to say about your company, products, services, etc., too much data can be overwhelming and reduce email engagement.

When you study and segment your target audience, you do not need to send a generic email but focus on one piece of data that will compel them to do business with your company.

Make sure that you have one goal when writing a personalized email, and include a relevant and clear CTA for your reader.

Learn to streamline your emails by cutting out filler words, format your emails, avoid repetitive information, watch out for wordiness, etc.

Establish Clear Calls to Action (CTA)

Your CTAs are one of the most essential elements of your email content, and the performance of your CTA will determine your response rate.

To optimize CTA in your email campaign effectively, you need to consider specific factors.

If you are a brand or organization that wants to promote products or services, a solid call to action will allow your readers to go where you want to go. For example, a sales page, a promotional video, or even their shopping cart to place an order.

There are three steps to optimize CTA in your email successfully:

Placements
When formatting and designing your email content, you need to ensure that the CTA button is visible clearly.

By considering the placement of your CTA button, you will increase the chances of your recipient seeing it and possibly clicking it.

Font and colors
Now that you have figured out the placement of your CTA button, the next step is to focus on your font and color.

A good practice to get your reader's attention is to find easy-to-read fonts that do not get lost with your email content. Once done, you need to choose the right colors on your email template.

Remember, the right colors can encourage engagement, and make sure that your CTA is visible to your reader.

Action focused words
Action-oriented words are one way you can optimize your email CTA and increase your email response rate.

The words are known to capture your reader's interest and encourage them to learn more about your company, brand, product, or service.

Consider using phrases or words like "try for free," "ways to beat," "......works best for you", "learn how," etc. Check out some power words that you can add to your email copy.

Ask For Responses

An excellent method to improve your direct mail response rate is quickening your response process.

Whether they are responding to a query or suggesting feedback, they should be able to address any need or concern.

While concluding your email with a CTA can be helpful, you can consider leaving open-ended questions which will encourage your subscribers to respond.

One of the best ways to increase your responses is to take surveys. By doing so, you will be able to understand the interest of your audience and help you segment them better.

You can even consider suggesting answers to popular questions asked about your products or service, so they do not have to think about it much and click the appropriate option.

Keep in mind that feedback is essential for your email campaign as it will help you improve on creating engaging content.

Always Proofread

As a marketer, the last thing you would want to do is make your email content look immature and unprofessional.

While you may have the best ideas and strategy for your marketing campaign, a poorly-drafted email will affect your email open and reply rates.

To ensure that you offer high-quality content and the utmost professionalism, proofread your emails. While it may sound silly, marketing campaigns often overlook proofreading their content.

User experience is one essential element in your marketing campaign, and it can directly influence your response rate.

By simply proofreading your content before sending them will ensure that your email copy has excellent grammar and no spelling mistakes, which helps you create the perfect reader's experience.

Follow-Up

Lastly, a simple follow-up with your subscribers can do wonders for your email campaign.

Email marketing is a daunting process as you constantly need to keep track of your subscribers, their intentions, their funnel position, and so much more.

While sending your emails, you'd be surprised that many recipients will not respond or even open your email.

Even though you have incorporated some of the best practices to boost email deliverability and a high response rate.

A follow-up email can work as a reminder to encourage them to open your email and possibly push them towards a sale.