How to Increase Email Open Rates for Different Industries?

How to Increase Email Open Rates for Different Industries?

Dec 29, 2022

AudiencePoint Team

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Email open rates can vary by industry, due to how consumers react to different types of email content. However, no matter what industry you are in, there are ways to increase open rates and create better email engagement. Keep reading to learn more about email open rates in different industries and how you can improve your email strategy to get more email opens. 

What Is the Average Email Open Rate?

The average open rate is 21.33% across industries, excluding Apple MPP opens. Following the average open rate can be a good benchmark for most businesses to measure the success of email marketing campaigns. 

However, average email open rates can vary by industry. Many industries like e-commerce, vitamins and supplements, and beauty/personal care can have much lower open rates than the average, ranging between 15.03% – 16.65%. 

Other industries can also perform at much higher open rates than the average, with government organizations, non-profit organizations, hobbies, and the arts having open rates ranging from 25.17% – 28.77%. 

These variances in average email open rate affect how companies should set goals for email campaigns and manage their email marketing strategy. However, putting the right methods in place and using the right email marketing tools can help your brand’s emails exceed industry averages. 

Why Do Email Open Rates by Industry Vary?

Email open rates typically vary by industry, since different types of organizations will send email content that is relevant to their needs. Different types of content will lead to varying interaction and engagement levels from consumers. 

For example, many beauty/personal care brands tend to have lower engagement rates because consumers don’t always feel as much of a personal connection to using these products. 

On the other hand, something like non-profit organizations or hobbies may create more of a personal connection for consumers, simply based on their engagement with the topics. 

While this may be the case, there are still many opportunities for brands across different industries to create a sense of connection and engagement with subscribers that will help increase email open rates

How to Increase Email Open Rates for Different Industries

If you’re wondering how to increase email open rates for different industries, this section will provide some tips for different types of businesses to increase email engagement and opens. 

Increase Open Rates for E-Commerce, Retail, and Sales Industries

Businesses in e-commerce, retail, or sales tend to have lower open rates. One of the main problems for these types of companies is a lack of engagement with the brand or topic. 

Some ways these brands can increase engagement that leads to consistently high open rates include:

  • Offering valuable tips for how to use products or solve common consumer issues. 
  • Finding ways to get customers involved through contests, sweepstakes, or asking for ideas/feedback. 
  • Emphasizing your brand’s mission statement or personal backstory. 
  • Showcasing the people behind the brand and their stories. 
  • Showcasing customers and their success stories from using your products. 

Each of these can help personalize a brand and make consumers feel more involved when they purchase your products. 

Increase Open Rates for Service-Oriented Businesses

Service-oriented businesses like legal, real estate, financial, and construction tend to have open rates closer to the average open rate of 21.33%. Something these businesses can struggle with in email marketing is making their brand stand out from competitors, since many services offer similar features. 

Ways service businesses can stand out in marketing emails to achieve consistently high open rates and engagement are:

  • Provide educational content that shows your company is an authority in your industry. 
  • Create content that is relevant to consumer needs when they are deciding on hiring a service. 
  • Emphasize your mission statement and why you are passionate about providing the service. 
  • Show results and testimonials from customers you have helped previously. 

Implementing all these aspects in your email marketing will make consumers see your service as an authority they can rely on for information. 

Increase Open Rates for Non-Profits, Government Organizations, and Hobby-Oriented Businesses

Non-profits, government organizations, and hobby-related businesses tend to get the highest email open rates. While these businesses can get high open rates on their own, there are ways to improve them further. Ways to increase open rates and consumer satisfaction for companies in these industries include:

  • Use clear subject lines that emphasize the importance of the email. 
  • Always provide all the information needed in emails and create a good experience for the reader. 
  • Emphasize community and subscriber involvement when possible. 
  • Send emails at consistent times when subscribers are most likely to view them. 

Paying attention to these aspects will help improve open rates and engagement. 

How Are Email Open Rates Calculated?

Open rate is the percentage of email opens out of the total number of recipients. The email open rate formula is: number of opens ÷ the total number of emails sent = email open rate.

How Apple MPP Affects Tracking Open Rate

While open rate is an easy metric to calculate, tracking it has become more difficult due to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). Apple MPP causes emails to be opened on proxy servers before landing in inboxes. This leads to inflated open rates when they are tracked in email analytics tools. 

With this happening, AudiencePoint has taken steps to give you accurate email metrics. Our email insight software can isolate Apple MPP opens from reporting to provide accurate metrics that are relevant to today’s email marketing standards.

Do Subject Lines Impact Email Open Rate?

Subject lines do have a big impact on email open rates. When someone receives an email, they’ll read your subject line before anything else. This means it’s essential to write subject lines that grab attention and make subscribers want to know more. Things you can do to write subject lines that lead to high open rates are:

  • Keep subject lines brief. There’s only so much space for subject lines to display on most devices, so keeping them between 40 to 60 characters will help your full email subject display. 
  • Do market research to find keywords and topics that are important to readers. Writing emails regarding these topics and emphasizing them in your subject line will increase open rates. 
  • Emphasize important words at the beginning of the subject line to catch people’s attention. 
  • Showcase the value your email will provide in the subject line and follow through with great content once subscribers open the email. 

Using these tips will help you increase the effectiveness of your subject lines. If you’d like more help making your email campaigns more engaging, AudiencePoint’s email insight software can provide you with many additional resources.

How AudiencePoint Can Help with Your Email Marketing Needs

AudiencePoint’s email insight software will help you track email metrics, optimize send times, and analyze email subscriber activity. Learning about how your subscribers respond and react to your email content will help you create content and segment your email list for higher open rates and email engagement. 

AudiencePoint makes optimizing your email strategy easy by providing you with actionable insights into how you can improve email campaigns. Contact us today to learn how AudiencePoint can help your company with email marketing.