Four quick hacks to increase email open rates for newsletters, email lists, and more.
The average newsletter open rate is 15-25%. HubSpot says “a solid one is 20+%.” My AI DeepSearch says 15-25%.
My open rates for my weekly newsletter average between ~2-3 times that. 40-70%.
Here’s why I think this is, which anybody can copy.
One-word subject lines
This is the most important, I believe.
I deliberately use one-word subject lines.
My lowest open rates, by far, have subject lines with more than one word. And the longer the subject line, I’ve found, the lower the open rate.
This is an easy one to implement, which for me, makes a difference of 10% or more (yes, it’s that dramatic).
My welcome automation
Immediately after subscribing to my newsletter, everybody gets the same welcome email.
Subject line, one word: “Hey”
Body:
Shoutout to Karen Salmansohn who broke down why this works so well:
I started doing this to keep my emails out of the spam/promotion folder but found that, like Karen said, this welcome email had all those other benefits.
Worth mentioning:
- While the welcome email is automatic, I personally respond to everyone, asking about their business, the freelancing/work they do, or what they study. I’ve thought about using AI for this, but many people respond with more than just a letter, and responding manually allows me to keep a pulse on who’s attracted to my newsletter and what they’re looking for.
- One day after the welcome email, I also have another automatic email go out, with five actionable marketing hacks anybody can implement. I tried hard to make that email a banger to set a high expectation with the newsletter, further boosting open rates.
Consistency
Everybody. EVERYBODY. Everybody says it.
One of the biggest drivers of newsletter success is consistency.
Like everything else I do (I’m at 854 consecutive days making a TikTok/IG Reel and 606 consecutive days putting up a podcast), I’m incredibly consistent with my newsletter.
Benefits of consistency with a newsletter:
- Your writing style and techniques improve (my newsletter did not start with one-word subject lines).
- You’re forced to explore topics more. You become better at doing and explaining them. Few people become excellent and many people recognize excellence.
Culling the herd
The last time I did this was January 2024, over one year ago. I culled the herd.
“List cleaning” is a thing for a reason.
Aside from reducing costs if your email marketing plan involves paying for subscribed contacts, list cleaning improves open rates.
Lots of email providers like Gmail or Outlook monitor engagement. Low engagement makes emails more likely to go to spam or the promotions tab.
What I did one year ago was very simple:
- Segmented my list into people who haven’t opened an email in the last three months.
- Sent an email to these people saying, “I’m cleaning my list and my email marketing provider says you haven’t opened my emails in the last three months. If this isn’t true, please click this button to remain on the list.”
- Gave these people 1.5 months to click the button.
- Archived all contacts who did not click the button.
That’s four very easy things you can do to increase open rates and have more people read your messages.
Thank you for reading!
Compact Keywords
This email open rate guide was originally written for my newsletter.
Like any great resource, I try to make the newsletter dense with useful info and little fluff.
And while I’m certainly not always perfect, that is my goal for all my content.
For those who don’t know I just released an SEO Program, Compact Keywords, about how to use SEO to get paying customers, users, and warm leads to your business.
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Thank you Jason Leibler of Fit & Function Therapy for the review.
To check it out, Compact Keywords is available at https://compactkeywords.com/
