Increasing Your Response Rates
Increasing your response rate includes open rates, response rates, even inbox rates.
First things first... it's important to keep your IP reputation as high as possible. We strive for above 90 for the best baseline. Assuming that your score is consistently above 90 (if not, please review the email from last week in which we discussed your Sender Score), then you can be pretty certain that the rest of it has to do with both engagement and content... The good news is those are the only variables that you have to worry about on your end.
So, how do you improve your engagement?
Here are 7 simple things to start testing immediately...
1. Test plain text content only. Many times we see an issue with the HTML formatting itself. It's not enough to simply copy and paste your HTML from your favorite HTML editor. You need to make sure it's properly formatted for email...
2. Test your footers including your unsubscribe link and surrounding text. Start by removing the text from your message entirely and slowly add components back in to isolate any text that may "sound" like you're being extra cautious for FTC compliance, buy may simply be worded a little "too" strong.
3. Test from email address and reply to email address. Start by testing an email address from your sending domain. (ie yourdomainmail.com, yourdomain.net, or wherever your email client is hosted). Be sure that you've added the SPF records to your DNS for the sending domain. These are provided with your welcome email containing all of your account details.
4. Test message content... Content isn't just blocked due to trigger words. The ISPs have gotten quite sophisticated and can recognize "speech" patterns if you will causing them to junk your email simply based on the way the content is written.
5. Send different messages to unengaged subscribers than you do to engaged subscribers. In other words, if someone hasn't opened a message in 6 months, send them email copy with a different subject line designed to get them to open the email.
6. Purge "dead" leads or send from a different IP address. Over time the ISPs will likely filter IPs based on engagement, rather than just individual subscribers. While it's best to simply get rid of people that are simply not interacting with you, it's understandable that you may not want to ditch older leads since not every email client has images turned on or registers opens. In this case, you really do want to send from different IP addresses at the very least.
7. For NEW people coming into your list, strongly encourage people to whitelist your from domain (and then don't change it)!
Author: Heather Seitz
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This information has been provided by http://www.EmailDelivered.com and written by Heather Seitz. To find more on increasing your response rates, visit http://www.emaildelivered.com/email-delivered/increasing-your-response-rates/. Don’t forget to sign up for the EmailDelivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources related to email marketing and email deliverability.
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