Many people put a lot of effort in improving their email open rate and bounce rate, but there’s a more important target to hit: Your email response rate can make or break your email campaigns. But even worse than a low email response rate, it’s not tracking the metric at all.

Cold email outreach is awkward enough, since it involves contacting people we don’t know. When you track your email response rate, though, you can get an idea of what appeals to your target audience, how they engage with your email copy, and how well your email marketing campaign has performed.

In short, this is a metric every marketer needs to put on their radar.

But how do you improve your email response rate? What should you do and what you shouldn’t? Read on to find out the answers to these questions, along with how you can make your email campaigns the talk of the town.

What Is the Average Email Response Rate?

Email response rates vary depending on the industry niche and the type of email you send. A few email marketers say 10% is a good average rate, while others think 30% would be more appropriate.

It’s precisely why setting benchmarks for this metric is difficult. #YouGottaDoWhatYouGottaDo

You must try to aim to get the best average response rate you can. Of course, the metric will tend to be lower if you don’t have enough marketing experience. This is why a 10% minimum is practical for beginners. Once you’ve been in the cold email game for longer, you can aim for 30%.

3 Email Engagement Tips

Cold email is tricky. Moreso, when you’re an agency or marketing team handling multiple clients. After all, what works for one may not work for the other.

However, there are three surefire ways to improve your email response rate. All you need to do is work on applying cold email best practices and watch your email rate go higher – and higher.

Tip 1: Create the Best EVER Email Copy

You absolutely cannot compromise your email copy.

No pressure, though.

Here are a few tips to help you improve your email copy ASAP:

  • Cater your email copy to your target audience. Address their pain points, talk about them, and design it in a manner that appeals to them.

  • Keep the copy short and concise. You should also break your copy up with lots of white space, short sentences, bulleted lists, and questions.

  • Ensure the topic is relevant to each segment. General emails don’t resonate with everyone, which means conversion rates from those emails are embarrassingly low. Instead, you should focus on email list segmentation based on consumer behavior, age groups, social media platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook, demographics, and so on, and then send them emails accordingly.

  • Craft a good email subject line – one that’s impactful and catchy.

You can have everything in place: An email drip campaign, an automated email marketing tool, and a highly targeted lead list. Still, you cannot expect your campaigns to be successful if your email copy is sub-par. The whole thing will be like opening a treasure test – only it’ll be empty.

Tip 2: Personalizing Your Email Copy

Your subscribers shouldn’t feel like they’re one of the hundreds that are receiving the email. Make use of the words “I“ and “you” to make the recipient feel like this is a personal conversation between two friends. Trust us, personalized emails can make the world of a difference.

And if there’s anything that is better than personalized emails, it’s personalized follow-up emails.

Following up should be a part of everyone’s email marketing strategy. You see, it’s not necessary for your prospects to revert to you just after the first email. Sometimes you’ll have to follow up one more time, sometimes thrice.

Another necessity for follow-up emails is a call-to-action or CTA. The subscriber should know what is expected next of them if they like your proposal. In fact, a good CTA can also help increase your click-through rate.

Nevertheless, whether you’re sending your first email or following up, you need to be diligent (not annoying) and add a touch of personalization in your approach. Always explain why you are emailing so even the recipient knows what you want from them.

Tip 3: A/B Test Your Emails

A/B testing is your light in the dark, murky waters of cold email.

Whether it’s improving engagement with potential customers, finalizing the right email templates, or boosting your conversion rate – everything is possible with A/B testing.

Carrying out these tests gives you a better idea of what works with your target email users. This can include images, text, subject lines, CTA button colors, email copy length, and so on.

At QuickMail, we call A/B testing “variations” that can be incredibly helpful to enhance your digital marketing and lead generation efforts. You can use the platform to set up two variations every week to determine the winner, and afterward, pause the losing variation, and create a new one for the upcoming week. This can be a continuous cycle that can keep your email copy relevant, irrespective of the number of emails you send.

QuickMail Bonus Tip: One Thing You Must NOT Do

Since we’ve already discussed the three best ways to improve your cold email campaigns to improve your email reply rate, it’s only fair we also discuss a pointer that might just negate all your efforts. #Fail

Here’s what you need to avoid at all costs:

Leaving Your Emails Unoptimized for Different Devices

Where do you think your prospective customers read your emails? Tablets? Mobile phones? Computer? All three?

Many customers have hit the unsubscribe or spam button because the emails they received didn’t display well on mobile. It’s sad but true.

Just think about it: You’re already putting in all the effort to work on creating the best cold email copy, so why not go the extra mile and optimize it to make it readable on different devices? This can include keeping your email copy and subject line short, working on your preview text, and positioning your CTAs at the center of your email.

Your clients will thank you for seeing the difference this one trick will make on their conversion rates.

High Email Response Tate = Higher Revenue

When you’re an agency or a marketing team, your clients view you as an expert. You cannot afford to make half-hearted attempts and give them average or below average results.

Use our above-listed tricks to deliver on your promises to your clients – whether it’s more leads, higher conversion rates, or maximizing revenue. And definitely don’t forget to optimize your email copy for devices.

Start your email marketing campaign on a solid note with QuickMail by signing up for our FREE trial.