Email Open Rates by Industry – Are You ahead of The Game or Falling Behind?

In this post you’ll discover what the email open and click thru rates are for your industry and learn how to get more traffic to your blog using effective subject lines.

I’ll also disclose what my top 5 opens are and give you examples of what types of subject lines work and what don’t work as well as the reasons they do and don’t work.

Firstly, here’s a table of industry open rates which you can use to determine whether you’re ahead of the game or falling behind.

The data in this image has been sourced from stats which is dynamically included in reports for MailChimp users. Learn more about MailChimp.

Effective Subject Lines Increase Open Rates

Its better to explain whats inside your email content rather than use the subject line to try and sell or advertise anything.

The reason for this is that most of us get more spam than legitimate emails and don’t have the time or patience to open all of them. Many of us scan the subject lines and rarely open any emails which contain sales or advertisement keywords in the email subject.

Lets take a look at what works and what doesn’t:

What works

• A short & simple description of whats in the content of the email
• Your email newsletter or rss to email updates should match what you offered at the time of opt in
• Insert your company name and date which will produce a better open rate

What doesn’t

• Sales copy in the subject line doesn’t work and produces the worst email open rates
• Anything that remotely resembles spam rarely gets opened as we all get far to much already
• Advertising anything using keywords which contain spammy, sales words rarely get opened

Subject Line Example’s

Doesn’t work – “One Day Sale – Shop Now And Save 25%”

Works – XYZ Company News Update 10 Jan 2012

If you don’t get your email opened then you get zero click through rate to your WordPress posts.

An exception to this is when you offer subscription to a list specifically created to offer advertisements, offers and promotions for products and services related to your sites content.

Split Testing E-Mail Subject Lines

Split testing to test the effectiveness of your e-mail subject lines can substantially increase email open rates leading to higher click thru rates and therefore more website traffic.

You can read more on how easy it is to split test your subject lines and website traffic from increased click thru rates.

Increase Click Through Rates (CTR)

The most important part of email marketing relating to open & click thru rates is, firstly, getting to your subscribers inbox. You can see from the stats above that open rates average around 20-30% and CTR about 2-3%.

If your email doesn’t get through to your subscribers inbox, your open rates & CTR will be low.

Try keeping your emails really short so they look like a personal message rather than send the full content. This way you will increase the amount of emails you get in your subscribers inbox therefore increase open rates.

Once you have increased open rates, you can increase CTR by simply using a link to your latest posts rather than the full content which will have to pass the gatekeeper and anti spam software. Learn more about how to avoid spam filters and increase open & click rates.

Why would your CTR be high if you already send the full content?

My Top 5 Open Rates

1. Tooltip Plugin
   42.7% open rate
2. WordPress Speed
   41.7% open rate
3. WordPress Pro’s
   40.2% open rate
4. Next Gen Gallery
   38.9% open rate
5. ecommerce themes
   38.1% open rate

Aweber or MailChimp?

• If you’re a beginner i’d suggest you start with Aweber as they offer a series of emails linked to resources which help you get started. Aweber also offer a opt in form plugin making it very easy to insert nice web forms in your blog to build subscribers.
• If you’re on a budget i’d suggest you start with MailChimp as they offer a system which is easy to use, 12,000 free emails a month and free storage for 2,000 email subscribers.
• If you have already tried Aweber, why not give MailChimp ago. You’ll receive $30 in MonkeyReward credits and learn from another one of the best in the industry. No risk as its forever free for 2,000 subscribers.

Using effective subject lines will help increase your email open & click thru rates resulting in more traffic to your blog posts.