How to Improve Shopify Email Open Rate? 11 Proven Ways to Follow in 2024

Are you looking for ways to drive more sales through email marketing this year? Start by focusing your efforts on improving your email open rate.

Studies show that a lack of engagement with email marketing is often rooted in emails getting lost in customers’ inboxes – and ensuring high email open rates should be one of your top priorities. If you’re using Shopify as an eCommerce platform, this blog post has got all the answers. 

If you want to learn how to improve your Shopify email open rate then we got you covered. In this blog, we have listed down 11 proven strategies to help boost your Shopify email open rate including tips like optimizing subject lines, segmenting customer lists, and utilizing automated flows.

Get ready to revamp your existing approach and start sending more effective emails today,

So, without any further ado,  let’s learn how to improve Shopify email open rate.

How to improve Shopify email open rate?

Here are 11 tips that will help you learn how to improve Shopify email open rate.

1. Personalize The Sender’s Name

In email marketing – open rates are a powerful metric and are heavily influenced by sender names. The first thing a user notices in their inbox is the sender’s name. Also, most people determine whether or not to open an email depending on the sender’s name. Moreover, ensure that the sender’s name is always consistent with the brand’s identity.

Customizing the “From” name of your campaigns means that an email with consistent tone and branding might look to the receiver as though it was received from someone they recognize rather than a generic address. The sender’s name can be a company name, a person’s name, or a mix of the two. 

So, how you present your business and yourself to the audience impacts open rates, engagement, and your email campaign’s overall effectiveness. Here are five sender name tips that you can use to enhance your email open rates:

• First, decide why customers subscribed and pick a name that will meet their demands. Ensure that your sender’s name is easy to remember.
  
  
• Avoid one of the most common email blunders by saying no to versions such as “noreply@XYZ.com” or “info@XYZ.com,” which seem malicious and impersonal.
  
  
• Check how sender names appear on different devices and email applications to make sure they are brief and appropriately shown.
  
  
• Do A/B testing to find which performs best for your target demographic.

Remember that the sender’s name will always be viewable, and most recipients will see it first. Consequently, they instantly decide whether or not to mark the email as spam. Personalizing the sender’s name is a wonderful way to boost email open rates. In email campaigns, trust and consistency are critical.

2. Make Your Subject Line Perfect

Before sending any email, make sure you test different email subject lines to improve the performance of their emails. That is why it is important to write engaging subject lines to attract readers to click through.

While they may seem a small part of your email, they are one of the first impressions you create on your emails.

Here are some tips you can consider while writing email subject lines.

• Write multiple subject lines: You should write at least ten subject lines for every email. Then, select the best.
  
  
• Keep it to less than 50 characters: Make sure you restrict subject lines to less than 50 characters. Subject lines with fewer than 50 characters had incredible open and click-through rates than those with over 50 characters.
  
  
• Alliteration/Emojis: Consider using alliteration and emojis as they attract eyeballs. Try it out for some creative email subject lines.
  
  
• Call to Action: It’s always a good idea to add a call to action in the subject line of an email. A call to action in the subject line can improve open rates.
  
  
• More caps, fewer openings:  Caps are too strong; therefore, you should not take them lightly. Use them carefully and wisely.
  
  
• A/B test subject lines: The best way to determine the best subject lines.

Experiment with great subject lines that will work for your company. Modify them slightly and try them on for size.

3. Improve The Preview Text

The email preview text is the text line displayed in the recipient’s inbox below the subject line.

For the reader, preview text adds another layer of information to let them decide which emails to open and which to reject. Studies indicate that preview text can raise click-through rates by up to 30%.

Here are 6 ways to personalize emails and prompt customers to open your emails.

• Don’t leave it blank: Make sure you use something important in the preheader.
  
  
• First things first: If you don’t utilize preview text, ensure the first thing a reader notice is amazing. But not your email address.
  
  
• Use powerful action words: Email preview texts are just two sentences long (85 and 100 characters), and if you like them talking to your recipient and persuading them to open the email, you must use strong action phrases.
  
  
• Use it as an extension of your subject line: While writing your preheader text, consider how it can expand your subject line to attract people to open the email.
  
  
• Add CTA: Add a call to action in the preview text to notify recipients that they should open your email.
  
  
• Don’t repeat the same thing: Do not repeat the sender’s name or subject line in your preview content.

Use the preview text to demonstrate to the readers what the email is about and why it’s necessary, back up your subject line, and keep them from abandoning your email or selecting “spam.”

4. Keep Your Shopify Subscriber List

There are different ways to create your subscriber list. Here are a few ways to do that. However, the goal is to comprehend your objectives and select the strategy that best satisfies your requirements.

• Social Bar: A social bar appears on top of anything you’ve published on social media and prompts people to join your email list.
  
  
• Landing Page: If you desire to promote your email list via an advertising campaign. You must create a subscribe landing page to have a devoted spot to direct anyone curious to subscribe to your email list.
  
  
• Pop-ups: Pop-ups let you sell a promotion, like subscribing to your email list while drawing the visitor’s attention. So, delight the audience with the enticing message in the pop-ups.
  
  
• Make a good first impression: The first mail that a subscriber receives from you is a welcome email, which establishes the tone for subsequent interactions. Make your readers feel bound by your email; a good experience can keep them engaged in your upcoming campaigns.
  
  
• Signup and Checkout Forms: When someone purchases a product, it’s the right time to motivate them to sign up for your emails. If you’re a Shopify store owner, you can quickly add a subscribe tick box to your checkout process to let customers join your email list.
  
  
• Keep a clean email list: Filter your email list as regularly as possible. It protects the reputation of your company. A damaged brand reputation will affect your email deliverability rates and sales.
  
  
• Engage with inactive subscribers: Before you say goodbye to your inactive subscribers, make sure you’ve made enough effort to get them to rejoin.
  
  
• Make it simple to unsubscribe: Don’t hide the unsubscribe button to avoid your emails being labeled spam. It will impact your bounce rate, email deliverability, and reputation.

Keeping your email lists is a must-do for businesses. This provides you with an organized database for email segmentation, letting you develop compelling, targeted email marketing campaigns.

Moreover, keeping a clean database increases email delivery, maintains your reputation, and saves time and money. Moreover, you can even automate your email marketing campaign.

5. Include Relevant Content In The Email

Here are a few prompts that will help you make emails more meaningful.

• Educate your customers: Customers can be enlightened about using your products. They can educate them about your brand, like how it is established as an authority and a credible source to purchase from in the future. Consider including links to buyer’s guides, sharing related videos, or supplying information about a certain product category.
  
  
• Add videos: Video, which is more effective than ever. Consequently, consider how to enhance your email template content by including a relevant video. Whether it’s one you created or one you explored. If that would be helpful to your audience, send it through email.
  
  
• Include a call to action: An email is incomplete without a call to action. In addition, you may only be able to attain your marketing objectives if your audience is inspired to take action. CTAs can induce your subscribers and encourage them to participate in your campaigns.
  
  
• Test your email on multiple devices: Before you schedule and send your email, test it on multiple devices to ensure that your content appears as planned. These steps are important to follow if you want to send interesting emails so that your readers act on your Shopify email notification and take action.

6. Use Double Opt-in For Subscribers

The purpose of a double opt-in is to filter unsafe signups. Ideally, all unverified email addresses would be spam traps, email bots, and malicious signups. Individuals who aren’t interested in getting your emails will unsubscribe or report them as spam. 

However, you should know that some interested customers must confirm their membership. Therefore, you have to keep it as low as possible. Here are a few practices that can assist you in doing this.

• Your signup confirmation page should be obvious to take the required action.
  
  
• Your opt-in confirmation request email’s subject line and preview text should make it clear to take action.
  
  
• The structure of your opt-in confirmation request email should attract recipients’ attention to the one action you want them to take: clicking the link to confirm their subscription.
  
  
• When someone clicks on the opt-in confirmation link, your opt-in confirmation page should explicitly show that they have subscribed.

You may enhance the customer experience by only improving opt-in confirmation clicks by using double opt-in.

7. List Segmentation

Email segmentation implies categorizing your email subscriber list into categories based on specific information. This is the first step to hyper-personalization. This not only makes customers delighted, but marketers say a 20% rise in revenues after executing personalized email advertising. You have unlimited choices for tailoring your email marketing campaign with segmentation. 

Here are some email segmentation strategies 

• Purchasing behavior (Past purchase, Purchase frequency, Product type, Loyal buyer)
• Location
• Online browsing habits
• Demographics (Gender, Age, Marital status, Lifestyle, Occupation, Education) 
• Sales funnel stage
• Open and click-through rates 
• Hierarchy Level
• Information collected via surveys, lead magnets, Opt-in forms
• Time zone
• Email service provider and device
• Activity/Inactivity on the website

Email list segmentation is fundamental for an effective email marketing campaign because it lets you concentrate on the individual in front of you.

8. Beat The Spam Filter

The biggest problem is that emails are being labeled as spam. A spam filter can destroy your brand reputation, and your marketing endeavors can suffer a significant setback with drop-in open rates.

When you send a new campaign, inbox providers review your user engagement with your previous campaigns. They then employ this information to decide whether or not to send your recent campaign to the inbox.

As you can see, whether or not your campaigns reach your subscribers’ inboxes is determined by your previous campaign engagements.

If they open and click on your prior emails, your next campaign will likely get sent to their inbox. On the other hand, if they remove them without opening them, your most recent campaigns will end up in the spam folder. Here are some tips to help you get your emails to go to your inbox:

• First, email those who have allowed you.
• Use a personalized ‘From’ name.
• Use segmentation to deliver tailored, relevant campaigns.
• Use a valid reply-to address.
• Send from your company’s domain.

9. Send Your Emails At an Appropriate Time

Sending emails at the right time is one of the best email list-building tips for Shopify stores. Timing is a vital part of efficient email marketing. The days and times you send emails to impact your open and click-through rates.

At times, it even influences your customer’s purchasing decisions; in turn, they forget about the items they left in the cart. If you encounter such situations as a Shopify store owner, leverage Shopify abandoned cart emails and timed your emails appropriately.

However, the fact is that audiences vary greatly between categories and geographies. So all of that data is only a starting point. The best time to send emails depends on your audience; you must figure out when your target audience likes to read your message.

10. Keep customers in the loop with automated email marketing

Get automated flows and let them help you; the gift keeps giving. Automation is key to leveling up your email marketing game and multiplying your customer retention rate. Automating your email sequences is an opportunity to put your email marketing efforts on autopilot and create as much passive income for the business as possible. 

Automated email campaigns facilitate personalizing the buyer journey from the get-go. Strategically determine the frequency of emails to bypass spam complaints, and you are ready to leverage your automated workflows.

11. Analyze results & optimize strategy

Your email marketing strategy continues after executing your plan. The last piece of the puzzle is reporting on your progress.

Tracking your implementation—such as delivery and opening metrics—will give you a precise picture of what’s working and not. You can then use this data to quickly iterate your strategy and double down on the tactics that perform well. Here are some more metrics that can give you a clear assessment of your success:

• Open rates: this metric suggests the percentage of people opening your emails to evaluate your active subscribers—and how well your subject lines are performing.
  
  
• Bounce rate: your emails might never land in your subscribers’ inboxes if they’ve marked you as spam. The bounce rate reveals this number, and the average for eCommerce is 0.19%! You can also check your deliverability rate to see how many subscribers you reach.
  
  
• Return on investment: this metric is an overall review of the success of your email marketing—from newsletter design to email content. If you’re driving sales with every mail, your CTAs, color scheme, and copy are working their magic.
  
  
• Trackable links are allocated a unique ID that can be read by analytics software like Google Analytics. Trackable links help you understand where incoming website traffic is coming from.
  

Evaluate your email marketing campaigns against your sales goals to comprehend your progress. Once you discover what’s working, you can easily revise your strategy to concentrate on your strengths.

Conclusion

Growing your email list should be one of the top priorities for every Shopify store owner in 2024. By following the tips we’ve laid out above, you’ll be well on your way to increasing your Shopify email open rates and driving more sales. Always split-test different subject lines, forms, send times, and images until you find what works best for your audience.

 And if you need help growing your email list or need expert advice on improving your Shopify email open rate.

Our team would be happy to chat with you about everything eCommerce and help you take your business to the next level. What methods have you used to grow your email list? Have they worked? We hope that you find this guide on how to improve Shopify email open rate.