Why Reader Don’t Open Your Emails?
Email marketing is one of the best channels to connect with our readers and market our product and services online without paying top dollars on Advertising to reach our audience on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc.
We cannot control social media platforms to stop reaching our message to our audience.
It’s their platform, their rules, and you have to play by their rules.
When Facebook first launched its Facebook pages, 100% of messages reaching our audience.
Now, you would be lucky if your messages reach 15% of your followers. If you want to reach all your followers, you have to pay Facebook to reach your audience!
But with email marketing, it’s not like that.
If you properly build and maintain your list well, you can reach all your subscribers as long as they want to hear from you. No big tech companies can stop you from reaching their inbox.
Email marketing has its own challenges as well. One such challenge is, Your emails are not getting enough opens by your subscribers or readers.
If you think email marketing is not effective these days means, then you are wrong.
One of my niche site email list (5K subscribers) constantly gets 20% to 40% email open rates. If you are not getting at least 20% email open rates, then below few points could help you in improving your email open rates.
Why Your Readers Don’t Open Your Emails?
1) Emails Not Adding Value
If you are not adding enough value to each email you send, your subscribers don’t bother giving much attention to your emails.
They ignore to open your emails just by seeing your “From” name. They don’t even look at your email subject line.
Next time before you send any emails, ask yourself what value your subscribers will get in this email. If it’s nothing, then think before you hit send button.
2) They Are Not Aware of Your Name
Most email marketers use their Names in the “From” field. Nothing wrong with that.
But when you reach your customer inbox, they may don’t know who you are, or it’s hard for them to pronounce/remember your big Name.
If you are very popular, they could easily remember your Name, but it’s always better to use your Name with your brand name if that’s not the case.
Example: Instead of just – Arun
Use: Arun @ PushIncome, Arun from Push Income, Arun | PushIncome
At least for me, I always prefer to use my Name with the brand name when I send any emails to subscribers. That way, readers can quickly identify who’s this Arun is.
3) You Are Only Selling, Not Serving
The goal of every email marketer should be connecting, serving, and selling. But most marketers use email marketing only to Sell their stuff.
If you are only selling stuff on emails, then why they need to open always? They already know what’s your objective of the emails. So it won’t excite them to open your email.
I’m on one of the popular marketing guru email lists. The only email that I receive from that guy is – buys this, buy that, deadline expiring soon, etc., kind of emails.
What’s the point of opening such emails? There is no value from me to open his emails.
I love his stuff, but not his emails.
I subscribed to his email list only to learn and watch his headlines, that’s all, so I don’t open any of his emails to read his email content.
4) They Are Not Interested in Your Content
If your reader is not interested in the type of content you are sending to them, they don’t open your emails. Check your previous campaign and see what kind of campaign gets the most response and send such content to your subscribers.
If they like motivational emails, send more emails; if they want case studies, then send case studies more. See what your readers like most and send more of such content to them.
Email marketing is all about serving your readers.
5) You’re Tricking Readers with the Subject Line
Don’t trick your email newsletter readers with clickbait email subject lines. It could work few times, but not good for your reputation.
With email marketing, we are building a long-term game, not short-term success.
Example:
Email Subject line: Grab our best-selling eBook for FREE
Email Content: Participate in a contest to win a free ebook
In the about example, you can see that the email subject line is promising a free ebook, but you will understand you have to participate in a contest to win a free book when you open the email. That means not all users will get a free book. Only 3 or 4 people could win that free book.
I just hit “Unsubscribe” for such emails.
6) Your Emails Are Going to Spam
Before you send any emails, check whether emails are going inbox or spam folder. If your emails are going to the spam folder, then obviously, your open rate will affect.
7) Your Emails Are Only “Click Here to Read.”
If you send only clicks generating emails without offering content in the email itself, some users stop opening your emails because they already know they need to click again to learn more about the topic.
8) You Are Not Connecting with Your Readers Enough
If you’re not connecting with your readers, your readers don’t engage with your email well. No one likes to interact with robots. To connect with your readers, share your personal stories, fails, what’s happening with your life, have a personal level connection with your readers. People Do Business With People They Know, Like, and Trust.
Your emails should sound like you have conservation with your friend.
Don’t send emails like how faceless companies used to send.
9) Your Email Fonts Are Too Small
It hurts to read content with a small size font. If your email font size is smaller, then try to increase the font size of your email content text. It helps to read content easily on all devices.
I don’t know how many times I avoided opening emails because I know the sender using a small font, and it hurts my eyes to go through that small size text.
10) No Proper Formatting
Many users don’t bother to format their email content properly. They send by typing text from one end of the screen to another end of the text.
Spend few minutes of your time formatting the email before you send the email.
11) Not Mobile Responsive
Pick a mobile-responsive email template to make sure your content looks good on mobile. These days our first preference should be mobile. Send a test email and check how your email content looks on mobile. If it looks good and functions well on mobile, then you’re good to send.
12) Giving Too Many Choices in One Email
I don’t open from the sender, who often sends emails that contains too many calls to action (CTA) in a single email—having too many CTA confuses users to take action.
13) Too Lengthy Email Content
If you are writing 3,000 words in emails, you should reduce your email word count. Most of them don’t bother to read such lengthy emails.
14) You Are Sending Too Many Emails
If you are sending more than three emails per day, then you should reduce your email frequency. No one likes to read too many emails from the same sender.
15) You Are Not Sending Emails Regularly
If you are sending emails every three months once, then that’s too low frequency. People usually forget why they signed up for your newsletter. It’s recommended to send at least once a week to keep your users engaged with your emails.
16) They Already Bought What You Are Trying to Sell
If you are trying to sell some products through email marketing and users already purchased that product, such users don’t bother to open follow-up emails.
Most of the time, users use a separate email account to receive newsletters and use their primary email account to buy products. In such a case, your newsletter platform doesn’t tag users correctly, and you keep following up with your emails which doesn’t make sense to the user to read such emails.
17) You Only Talk About Yourself
People care about themself than you. If you are sending emails just about yourself and there is nothing it for them, they ignore opening your emails.
18) You’re Boring
If your emails look like templated copy-paste emails, it’s boring to read and engage with such content. Always try to send energetic and fun-filled emails. Don’t be boring 🙂
19) Don’t Send Emails like a Company
If you subscribe to any companies mailing list, you will understand what I’m trying to say here. Companies only send emails when they have coupons to share or when they have some special sales running on their site. Don’t be the guy who emails when they have something for sale.
20) Ads in Email
There is nothing wrong with monetizing content, but there is a better way to monetize. I notice some bloggers are putting ads in between email content or banner ads on top of emails. It doesn’t look good.
21) Clean Your List Often
If users are not opening or clicking any emails, remove them from your email list rather than keeping them. Because if you have more unengaged users on your list, it affects your email deliverability. Ultimately users who wanted to receive your emails won’t be able to receive your emails.
Why don’t you open emails? Please share your point of view in the below comment section.
