Five Ways to Improve Email Open Rates

So your driver recruitment advertising strategy has an email marketing campaign in place… You take the time to create emails to send to your leads, but then they’re tossed to the trash or spam folder. It’s common, and it’s an easy way to get frustrated. You’ve spent a lot of time and money into your email strategy and it turns out being a flop. It’s the million-dollar question… how can I get people to open up my emails?

We’ve put together these 5 tips that should dramatically improve your email open rates:

1. Make a Good First Impression

What is the first thing your recipients see when your email lands in their inbox? Who it is from and the subject line. These tips are important, if not the most important when it comes to increasing your open rates:

Words to avoid: help, percent off, free, reminder
Avoid multiple exclamation points and all capital letters: Too much punctuation will make your email seem less legit and spammy. (Ex: SHOP OUR STORE FOR 20 PERCENT OFF!!!)
Localize it: If possible, provide a city or state so your readers feel it’s targeted to them
Change the subject line each time: Using the exact same subject line for each newsletter can decrease open rates
Keep the subject line short and stick to one point: Always keep your objective in mind and ask yourself, “If I received this email, would I be interested and understand what the company wants me to do?” Read the subject line out loud. Ask co-workers to do the same and get their feedback. The subject line needs to relay timely and pertinent information.
From address: Instead of sending your email from a generic, company email (sales@example.com), personalize it with a name. Use an employee name like john@example.com.

2. Timing Is Key

Knowing the best times to send out your email blast is essential to your email strategy success. Before you send out your beautifully-created masterpiece, consider your audience. Ask yourself who your buyer persona is. For example, if you are running a B2C campaign your audience may have time to check their emails during lunch or after work. It’s probably not best to send your email at 8:00 am; try sending it out later that evening when they’re at home and not on the clock.

A good rule of thumb is to not send your email on a Monday or Friday. On Monday, it may get lost in the shuffle with all of the other emails and sent to the trash. Friday is Friday, need we say more? People are beginning to focus on the weekend and may not want to take the time to open up their emails.

3. Choose the Right Colors, Images and Fonts

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to create an appealing newsletter. We can give you a few tips as a guideline when creating the appearance of your email. You want to make sure not only the content is correct and engaging, but that the entire layout and colors look great, as well.

Don’t choose colors that are too bright: You want your email to pop, but don’t go overboard with bright reds and yellows all over the place. You don’t want it to seem as if you are yelling at your audience. Keep branding consistent while bringing in colors that settle well.
Images: Break up your text by incorporting images that reflect the content of your newsletter. This will make the read of the email easily flow and the text will appear shorter. Consider using bullet points to break up your text, too.
Fonts: Choose fonts that are easy to read. Stray from swirls and light/small lettering.

4. Find the Right Frequency

Take into account how often you want to send out your company newsletter. When creating your email marketing campaign, you should have a goal in mind on how many e-blasts you will send. One a month, two a month, once a week? You want to keep your readers informed but it’s vital to not blow up their inbox, which can results in unsubscribes.

Each company is diverse with a different number of leads and different content and updates. Once or twice a month is standard and if you decide to send one a week, make it short and focus on one big picture.

5. Administer A/B Testing

Now that you have a couple of useful tips that will increase your open rate and make your email shine, try administering an A/B testing campaign. Decide what type of test you’d like to run and determine the size of your sample groups. Perform the test through your email marketing provider and view the results to see which option worked best.

The A/B test will help you determine what day of the week gets you better open rates, what time of day works best for your content, what subject lines are most effective, what name should you use in the “from” field, and how sending times affect click rates.

We hope these five tips improve email open rates for your trucking company. Wondering what a good open rate is? Mail Chimp researched various industries and put together email marketing benchmarks. Take a look at their average email campaign stats by industry here.

The Hightower Agency is one of the best driver recruitment agencies. With over 25 years in the industry, we offer a wide variety of effective and affordable driver recruiting advertising solutions. Get in touch today for a free consultation!

What day of the week gets you better open rates? What time of day works best for your content? What subject lines are most effective? What name should you use in the “From” field? Does sending time affect click rates?