Why Your Email Open Rates Suck

Your relationship with the people in your email database is one of your most precious assets.

However, in the name of hitting short-term goals, and sometimes even vanity metrics, that email relationship can be anywhere from taken for granted to outright abuse.

If you’re wondering why your email open rates suck, in other words, why too few of the people you’re emailing actually care enough to open your email messages, start here to improve your email's chances of landing in your prospect's main inbox.

Segment your email lists by both:

• buyer persona (who the recipient is and what they care about)
• buyer's journey stage (where the recipient is in their research and decision-making process)

So, for example, if your company has two buyer personas and you have three buyer's journey stages to segment (awareness, consideration, and decision), you should have six different lists for the intersection of each buyer persona and buyer's journey stage.

58% of all revenue attributed to email marketing comes from segmented emails. (Source: The Direct Marketing Association).

Personalized emails have 26% higher open rates and 14% higher click-through rates. (Source: Experian Marketing)

If you do nothing else aside besides segmenting your database and customizing the content of your subject lines to match the buyer persona and their journey stage, you will see a significant lift in your email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

And just as important, you’ll be improving, rather than destroying, the relationships that you have with the actual people on your email lists.