Newsletter Opening Rate: 7 tips to optimize

Neither the best deal nor the most relevant content will help you if recipients don’t open your newsletter in the first place. For this reason, a useful starting point for newsletter optimization is the newsletter opening rate. It is not only an important key performance indicator, but also gives you concrete optimization potential. We take a look at the newsletter opening rate and show you how to get recipients to open your newsletter.

What is the newsletter opening rate?

The goal of a newsletter is to attract new customers and retain customers in order to generate more sales. This can only happen if the newsletter is actually opened. The newsletter opening rate indicates the percentage of recipients who open your newsletter. It thus describes the relationship between delivered and actually opened emails.

A distinction is made here between unique and total openings. While unique openings only indicate one opening per recipient, total openings count all openings – regardless of whether the same recipient opens the newsletter several times or not. Hence, the total openings metric should be taken with caution and is not that widely used.

Classification of the newsletter opening rate

To illustrate the importance of the newsletter opening rate, it helps to take a look at other important key performance indicators in newsletter marketing. The key performance indicators listed below are arranged chronologically. This means that the first metric refers to the first contact with the recipient (delivery rate), while the last metric accounts for the last point of contact with the recipient (unsubscribe rate).

• Delivery Rate & Bounce Rate provide information about deliverability and incorrect email addresses.
• Opening Rate indicates how many recipients open the newsletter
• Click-through Rate & Click-to-Open Rate refer to the clicks on links and call-to-action buttons
• Newsletter Conversion Rate reveals what percentage of recipients take a targeted action
• Unsubscribe Rate describes the percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from the newsletter after it has been sent out

How to measure and calculate the opening rat

Technically, there is only one way to measure the newsletter opening rate: with tracking pixels. These are small transparent images. As soon as the newsletter is clicked in the inbox, the tracking pixels load and send corresponding information to the server.

Whether you use CleverReach, Sendinblue or other newsletter tools: All these tools use the same technology to measure the open rate. Because of this, you can rely on the specified opening rate of your newsletter tool without hesitation, as well as on other key indicators (delivery rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate). Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness and for information purposes, we would like to provide you with the formula for calculating the unique opening rate:

The average opening rate is between 20% and 30%, depending on the industry. Don’t expect too much, because even in the industries with the highest opening rates (marketing/advertising), the average is not even 40% (source: sendinblue: E-Mail Marketing Branchen Benchmark 2020, p. 13f).

• Electronics/Hardware: 31.35
• Fashion: 25.20%
• Health/Fitness/Food: 25.85%
• Home/Garden: 20.50
• Travel/Leisure: 23.60%

7 tips for optimizing the newsletter opening rate

Is your newsletter opening rate around the average for your industry or even significantly below average? Then it’s time to optimize your opening rate. With these 7 tips, more of your subscribers are guaranteed to open your newsletter.

1. Attract Qualitative Leads

Obvious, yet often neglected, is the quality of the leads in your recipient list. If you only value the quantity of your newsletter subscribers, you may not only quickly end up with a very low opening rate. The recipient list will also be overflowing with leads that will never open your newsletter – let alone convert to customers.

You can achieve a much higher lead quality, for example, with individual incentives for newsletter subscriptions instead of randomly distributing vouchers, as is unfortunately seen far too often. Not only does randomly distributed vouchers reduce lead quality, but you also miss out on revenue. After all, one or the other newsletter subscriber would also sign up with other incentives.

You can use the following incentives:

• Vouchers: User receive a thank you in the form of a subscription voucher. Learn more about voucher marketing.
• Exclusivity: Newsletter subscription can be linked to an exclusive membership, which offers special benefits.
• FOMO: The fear of missing out is a strong motivation to sign up for a newsletter. Thus, only newsletter subscribers receive the latest information on discount promotions and other relevant topics.

With uptain’s free newsletter popups you incentivize newsletter subscriptions in a personalized way.

2. Bypass spam filter

Emails in the spam folder are rarely clicked on. Moreover, recipients usually don’t even realize that your newsletter has been sent. Spam markings and opening rates in the newsletter influence each other. On the one hand, spam markings – whether manual or automatic – lead to a low opening rate. On the other hand, a low opening rate makes a spam marking more likely.

So what do you do to bypass the spam filter, at best preventively?

• Trigger Words: Avoid trigger words like “free”, “discount” and “special offer” as much as possible. You can find trigger word lists on the web that match your industry.
• Website linking: Give trust signals to providers by linking your email address to your website, if you haven’t already.
• Newsletter Tools: Be sure to use reputable and well-known newsletter tools, as they prevent other users from sending spam through their server. Learn more about newsletter tools here.
• Authentication Protocols: Share your authentication protocols with the providers. Professional newsletter tools give you the possibility to enter them with a few clicks (e.g. DKIM, SPF and DomainKeys).

3. Segment customers

The topic of segmentation has been on everyone’s lips for quite some time. But to what extent does it influence the newsletter opening rate? Once you have segmented your recipient list into specific recipient groups, you can tailor all components of the newsletter to the respective segments – from the layout to the content to the CTAs (calls to action). However, two components in particular are relevant for the opening rate: sender name and subject line.

How you segment is up to you. Demographic characteristics such as age can be just as useful as purchase frequency. For example, if you segment your customers by purchase frequency, the subject line for leads with a higher purchase frequency can be tailored to regular customers (e.g., “For regular customers only”).

Interested in how to segment your online shop customers independent of the newsletter? Take a look at the blog post Customer Segmentation in E-Commerce.

4. Optimize subject line

Which brings us to the next option for optimizing the newsletter opening rate: the subject line. When the recipient looks in his inbox and sees the delivered newsletter, it is the subject line that decides whether he clicks on the email, ignores it or even deletes it.

• Keep it short: Always assume that there are several unread emails in the inbox at once. To stand out and grab the recipient’s attention, formulate short, concise subject lines. Increasing views via smartphones don’t necessarily make it easier, as in order to be fully displayed on most smartphones, subject lines must be no longer than 40 characters (4-6 words!).
• Meet expectations: Phrase the subject line so that the content of the email meets expectations. Although it may seem tempting at first, if the content doesn’t meet expectations, frustration can quickly set in, leading to unsubscribes. After all, you don’t want the unsubscribe rate to increase.
• Take your time: how much time and money have you invested in newsletter creation? Are you willing to risk that investment with an inadequate subject line? Better take a little more time for the subject line. Even if it’s just a few words: they make or break the newsletter openings.
• Avoid typos: Be sure to avoid typos. Correct spelling is more important in the subject line than in any other part of your newsletter.

5. Customize sender name

Along with the subject line, the sender name is also one of the first pieces of information your recipients receive. It provides information about who sent the newsletter and is of central importance in building trust. Here, the recipient recognizes whether the email is serious. If you want to improve the opening rate of your newsletter, the sender name should also be adjusted.

• Avoid “no-reply” addresses
• Create a personal setting by using names or surnames.
• Integrate the company name into the sender name

6. Optimize the sending time

The opening rate also depends heavily on the time at which the newsletter is sent. This in turn should always be adapted to your target group, otherwise a lot of potential is lost. Does your target group consist of working millennials and are you in the B2C sector? If the newsletter appears in the inbox towards evening, you have the best chances of a high opening rate. On the other hand, is your target group to be located in the B2B sector in particular? In this case, the perfect sending time is Tuesday to Thursday during regular working hours.

However, you should not completely trust such general statements, because your recipient list is unique. So use the sending time optimization, which is offered by most professional newsletter tools. This way you will know to the minute when the perfect sending time is for your recipients. If you have created segments before, you will also benefit from it now, because the segments will surely differ from each other.

7. Implement A/B Testing

Use the possibilities offered by your newsletter tool! Depending on the tool and the package you have booked, there are different testing options that allow you to optimize the opening rate, among other things: subject line, sender name and sending time are the obvious testing options. In addition, you can also test the layout and content of the newsletter.

Use the maximum potential of the newsletter opening rate

You invest time and money to generate newsletter subscribers and create your newsletter. So use the full potential and optimize the newsletter opening rate with our 7 tips!