Many factors play into an email campaign’s open rates. From the day of the week you chose to send it on to the length of the subject line of the email, they all influence the open rate.
There are many items higher on the list to improve your open rates than simply writing longer emails.
Plain-text emails receive just as much attention from subscribers as their HTML counterparts. This is why you should still bundle every HTML email with a plain-text companion using MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions).
Source: Campaign Monitor
Why bundle plain-text emails with HTML campaigns?
Although plain-text emails don’t provide tracking and reporting features, they ensure content reaches its target. Depending on the content type, they may be better suited for the target audience. With email clients like Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail disabling images, the content may be less visually pleasing when first received.
By ensuring you’re matching your visually rich HTML email campaign with plain-text (client friendly emails) you’ll improve open rates.
3 factors that influence your open rates
A long body of text (or images) wouldn’t necessarily improve open rates. Instead, you should shape the content according to the audience. If you’re sending out a blog post, naturally, the length of time it takes to read will probably inform recipients whether a click-through is worth it, while a new product or service announcement is supposed to be short and sweet.
1. Segmenting lists
The best method for improving open rates is ensuring willing readers receive your content. The best way for doing this is by segmenting your list into categories of recipients’ preferences. Although this requires additional effort, the results speak for themselves.
Segmented campaigns can lead to a 760% increase in revenue.
2. Scheduling and email cadence
Emails that hit inboxes over the weekend are not ideal when running a B2B campaign. Similarly, sending out blogs during the middle of the workweek will probably end in reduced open rates. To optimize your campaign’s engagement, you need to understand your subscribers’ habits. This means studying all the key metrics for each campaign email you send. It also requires making the necessary changes when you notice things aren’t working.
3. Optimize content for different clients
More than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. If you aren’t optimizing content for mobile clients, you’ll have a lower open rate. Regardless of whether the content is perfect for the recipient, poorly formatted content will see them delete your emails quickly.
How to measure the quality of your emails
The key metrics you should be tracking are open rates, bounce rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. This will give you both an idea on the quality of your content and the cadence of your email campaigns. If your content’s quality drops or if you’re sending too frequently, it’s possible that both the amount of unsubscribes and bounce rates will increase.
Does it really matter?
The length of the email won’t have a significant impact on the success of a campaign. Instead, the other factors mentioned here influence the way your readers engage with your content.
For example, even the length of the subject line can determine if a recipient will click on your mail. Improving the quality of content and the send cadence are likely to determine the overall success of each campaign.
What now?
Now that you know longer emails don’t necessarily improve open rates, check out this blog post on how to use list segmentation to increase engagement. With more accurate grouping in your list, you can improve your open and click-through rates.