Boost Email Open Rates By Doing This, Research Says

BY Jessica Helinski
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Prospects aren’t opening three out of four of your sales emails. That’s right, prospects only open about 24% of the sales emails they receive, HubSpot’s Mike Renahan reports in a recent article. “Salespeople today rely on email more and more in their prospecting efforts.,” he writes. “But what’s the point of sending emails if the recipients aren't reading them?”

Reps need to be strategic when writing emails, paying careful attention to details that can influence prospects to read.

Thankfully, there is a lot of research on various factors’ impact on email open rates. Renahan focuses particularly on email length, noting various studies on the topic. Citing data from Boomerang, Renahan reports that the ideal email length is between 50 and 125 words. These results were further supported by a Constant Contact study, which found emails with approximately 20 lines of text had the highest click-​through rates.

In addition to keeping the amount of words within the ideal limit, Renahan shares some other helpful tips to boost open rates:

  • Keep it simple. Boomerang found that emails written at a third-​grade reading level had the highest open rates. So, ditch the big words and complex sentences.
  • Always include an ask. Every email should include at least one question. “The study discovered when reps asked one to three questions, recipients were 50% more likely to respond compared to emails containing no questions,” Renahan writes. 
  • Use images in moderation. While adding images to an email can boost open rates, too many images have the opposite effect. Use restraint with images just as you do with text. 

Check out Renahan’s entire article for even more insights. Use this valuable data to craft emails that will be effective, rather than wasting time sending out messages that will only be deleted. As Renahan points out, “Often, being successful in sales isn’t about doing more — it’s about being more effective.”

Jessica Helinski Avatar

Jessica Helinski 

Director of Research

Jessica Helinski, Director of Research, manages the research department at SalesFuel. She also reports on sales tips and credibility for SalesFuel. Jess has worked as a reporter for the celebrity magazine Us Weekly and as a copy editor at JPMorgan Chase & Co. She holds a B.S. from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and majored in magazine journalism.

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