Email marketing can be one of your most effective channels, but if you’ve spent any amount of time doing it you’re probably wondering how to improve your email open rates.

On average, people check their emails 15 times a day. Your potential customers have signed up to see your emails because they’re genuinely interested in what you offer. They’re already qualified leads, and you have the perfect opportunity to nurture them and reel them in. You can broadcast your message directly to them without having to game the algorithms of search engines and social media. You simply hit Send and your message lands right in their inbox. Their phone dings and there’s your value proposition beckoning them to give you money.

You’ve spent hours crafting the perfect email blast, and now all you have to do is kick back and wait for the sales to roll in.

Except…only nine percent of your subscribers even opened the message…?!

Don’t despair. LMC can help.

With some maintenance and a little nurturing, your email list can be the most powerful tool in your digital marketing arsenal.

In this post we’ll show you:
– Why bounced emails and non-openers are making your campaigns sick
– How to re-engage with inactive subscribers
– How to remove bounced emails from Mailchimp and Constant Contact

Is it even worth it? Where’s the ROI?

Low open rates don’t have to be viewed negatively. Instead, they may be a helpful indicator that it’s time to take action. Use the opportunity to evaluate your strategy. Is the subject line compelling enough? Does the email provide real value? Has your email address been flagged as spam?

There’s a lot to learn from those metrics, but first you have to get rid of the dead weight bringing your stats down.

A vital aspect of maintaining a healthy email list is to clear out non-openers (inactive subscribers) and hard bounces. They’re not doing you any favors, and you’re not getting an accurate picture of how your emails are performing. Let’s take a closer look at exactly what those email list baddies are.

Non-Openers

These are people who subscribed to your newsletter, but haven’t opened an email in a long time – if ever. You’ve probably done this yourself, like that cooking blog you signed up for but never actually got around to reading. But you saved each email in case you might eventually open them… until the day arrives that you find yourself spiritually asphyxiating beneath an avalanche of 8,000 unread emails and your yoga instructor says you need to delete them to expel the emotional clutter clogging your chakras.

Or maybe your emails are simply going to your readers’ spam folder and vanishing unread into the vast internet ether.

Either way, these subscribers are not reading your message, and it is dragging your email open rates down.

Hard Bounces

These are the refugee emails with nowhere to go because the email address is misspelled or has been deactivated. Instead of being delivered to an active inbox, they “bounce” back.

Imagine you’re a door-to-door salesman on a street full of vacant houses, and each one, occupied or not, is counting against your totals at the end of the day despite the fact that you can’t sell a vacuum cleaner to an empty house.

Not only are these emails skewing your metrics, they’re most likely costing you money. Worse yet, high bounce rates may get your email flagged as spam by email providers and anti-spam networks.

Those are pretty good reasons why it’s time to trim the fat, get your email list lean, mean, and ready to drive those leads. Whether you use Constant Contact or Mailchimp, we’re going to show you exactly how to do it.

We’ll assume you’re already using preventative measures like double opt-in (when someone signs up for your list, and then receives an email prompting them to confirm their subscription) to make sure only real emails from interested leads are making it to your list. Also, you’ve probably already checked for and corrected any obvious typos in your contacts like norville.barnes@gmaiol.com.

But, for those who signed up with a valid email address and confirmed, but stopped paying attention, here’s what to do:

It’s Not You, It’s Me…. How to re-engage inactive subscribers

Some of your subscribers haven’t opened your emails in a long time. You don’t want to ignore them, but you also shouldn’t delete them without first trying to salvage that relationship.

What makes a contact inactive is different for everyone, with factors such as how often you send emails, and the length of your sales cycle, helping to determine what you consider inactive. If you only send out emails quarterly, for example, inactive might mean a subscriber hasn’t opened an email in a year. If you send them out weekly, inactive might mean a much shorter time-frame.

Whatever that number is for you, using segments to identify non-openers and send a re-engagement campaign should be your first step. Your goal is to get their attention again with unique, targeted content or a special offer they can’t resist clicking through for. Something like “We noticed you haven’t opened our emails in a while. Here’s 20% off.”

If they still don’t open the email, archive them.

Ask for a Click

Tracking email opens is becoming increasingly more difficult, so if you’re not careful you could end up removing valuable subscribers. Consider sending non-openers an email first asking them to click a button confirming they’re still interested, or to make sure their  account details are up-to-date. Tracking clicks is a more effective and reliable strategy to measure engagement, and this way you know you’re not removing good subscribers.

How to remove bounced emails from Mailchimp

Mailchimp calls bounced emails “cleaned contacts” and gives them a one-star contact rating. Mailchimp considers them invalid. To view and fix or archive them, you’ll need to create a new audience segment.

1. Log in to Mailchimp and click Audience dashboard from the left-hand menu.
2. Select the audience you want to clean from the audience drop-down (if you have more than one).
3. Click the View Contacts button.
4. Click New Segment at the top of the list.
5. From the drop-down menus select Email Marketing Status | is one of | Cleaned. (Unselect the others)
6. Click Preview Segment.
7. Select all contacts in the displayed list.
8. In the Actions drop-down click Archive
9. Click Confirm.

Archived contacts are always available to add back into your audience later if you want to, but they don’t count toward your billing.

How to remove bounced emails from Constant Contact

1. Log in to Constant Contact. It should open up to Recent Campaigns.
2. Click on the title of the most recent campaign.
3. In the Email Performance section, click on the number associated with “Bounces.”
4. Click on the “All types” dropdown menu and switch it to “Recommended for removal.”         
5. Check the top checkbox on the left side to select all the emails.
6. Click on the “Actions” dropdown menu and select “Delete.” Confirm by clicking the Delete button.

These are a few easy strategies to improve your email open rates. Once you get rid of the bad contacts in your email list you should get a clearer picture of how to craft better email marketing campaigns in the future.

Need help reaching your audience with the right email messages? We’d love to help.

Let’s talk!

Laura Mitchell Consulting is a strike team of marketing and growth strategy experts. With over 20 years of experience, we bring both the technical abilities and interpersonal skills necessary to make your business excel. Contact us at info@lmcllc.us.