What's a good open rate? Why don't our prospects open our emails? These are questions that are asked frequently at Lasso. If someone registered on your site why aren't they opening your email? How can you improve your open rates?
Following are email stats for the Real Estate industry from MailChimp:
Open
Rate
| Click Rate
| Soft Bounce
Rate
| Hard Bounce
Rate
| Abuse Complaint
Rate
| Unsubscribe
Rate
|
| 22.77% | 4.40% | 2.07% | 3.51% | 0.08% | 0.28% |
Well, first off, an open rate of 20-30% is actually pretty good. So if you are getting open rates in that range, pat yourself on your back - you're doing okay! If you're not getting that percentage or you want to strive to do better, here are a few tactics that are worth a try:
Timing of your email - experiment with the timing of your email. Morning isn't always the best time to send email, especially if you're sending to business email addresses. If it's a project launch event that's happening on the weekend, sending on a Thursday might be more effective than sending earlier in the week. Review who you are sending to and test what works best.
Image Use - ensure there's a good balance of images and text. Can the recipient still get the gist of the message even without seeing the images? An email may just be ignored if the recipient isn't sure what it's all about. Is there a clear call to action?
Catchy Subject lines - this is where being clever and even a bit witty are helpful. Ask yourself: would you open your email if you received it? Why should your recipients? Ensure that it's relevant and compelling. Spend some time on this and even test it out by trying out a couple of different options. Instead of a subject line of "Project Construction Updates", be more specific and try something that includes what's currently being worked on - maybe it's a specific comment about the unique flooring being installed or the environmental measures being taken.
Email Address - be consistent with your sender email address. There's always the debate over should it be a personal email address or a generic "info@" or "sales@" address. The most important thing: the "from" address contains the name of your real estate project or company and be consistent. Always, always, use a corporate email address - don't use a generic ISP email address or your Lasso email address.
Frequency - there's such a thing as too frequent and there's also such a thing as not frequent enough. If someone signed up on your website 3 months ago and you're just sending something now, they may have forgotten about you and not recognize your email. Conversely, if you're emailing brokers and realtors daily or even weekly with information that really isn't important to them, don't expect them to open the email!
List Quality - if you're sending an email to an old list, don't expect great results. In fact, be a bit wary of using it, you can get caught in spam traps and future emails sent to that ISP can be blocked. Don't keep sending to prospects who aren't opening your email. Pick up the phone and find out if they are still interested. It may look good and sound good to say you send out to a list of over 10,000 names but if you really only have a small percentage who are actively engaged, you're doing more harm than good by blasting to everyone.
Email Content - think about your own over-crowded inbox and the number of emails you get. What makes you open one email over another? Typically, home buyer prospects don't like to read too much - make it easy to read your email and have a clear call to action.
Email should only be sent to those who have requested it. If you're following that email marketing rule than you are halfway there. Always test your emails and monitor the results. Review your mass mail reports so you can see what works. Don't be afraid to sign up to receive updates from other projects and companies, so you can get ideas from those around you. Follow these ideas and you'll find your open rates and click-through rates improve!