How can you impact your email opening rate?

Prospecting by email can be a very good tool for your commercial development. However, it can also become the opposite if you do not take into account a crucial point: The reputation of your domain name. Indeed, it has a strong impact on your email opening rate.

At Prospilot, our team take this point very seriously, which can completely change the purpose of your prospecting.

Ps: Go all the way to the bottom, you'll find a tip 😉

What is the email opening rate?

The email open rate is a measure used in the field of email marketing to assess the effectiveness of an email campaign. It represents the percentage of recipients who opened an email compared to the total number of emails sent. Here's how it's generally calculated:

Open rate = (Number of emails opened/Number of emails sent) × 100

A high open rate may indicate that the subject of the email is attractive and that the recipients are interested in the content of the email. However, it is important to note that this rate does not measure engagement or actions taken after the email was opened, but only the fact that the email was opened.

Reputation: a key point in your email opening rate

What is reputation?

When we talk about reputation, we think directly of the public's opinion of someone or something. However, there is a second definition that is specific to our profession and which, ultimately, derives from the first. In prospecting, the reputation of your domain is a score that determines how email systems decide what will be accepted in your prospects' inboxes.

When you create an email campaign, there are therefore several factors to take into account so that your email address does not lose its reputation and to avoid ending up in spam, in other words, the place where no one ever consults their emails.

The status of email addresses

To impact your commercial development, you will regularly go through email campaigns. You will therefore, first of all, establish a database of the people you want to contact to offer them your offer. To ensure good deliverability, you need to know the status of the email address. By choosing emails with a secure status, you will increase your deliverability and maintain your reputation.

Each email has its own status and this can impact your commercial development both positively and negatively if you are not careful. So here are the various existing statuses:

• Safe: Valid address, active and ready to receive emails.
• Role: Address linked to a function, can be managed by several people.
• Catch-All: Server setting that accepts all emails (even invalid ones).
• Disposable: Temporary addresses, often abandoned after use.
• Inbox Full: These email addresses can no longer receive messages.
• Spam Trap: Addresses created to catch spammers.
• Disabled: Addresses that are no longer in use.
• Invalid: Addresses that do not exist, often due to an error or a typo.

In order to optimize your deliverability and at the same time your commercial development, you will therefore favor “Safe” and “Role” emails. By neglecting this step, you risk sending emails every week in “Spam Trap” and to invalid addresses that will lower the reputation of your email.

How to do it?

In order to check your email addresses there are several tools that will be useful to you:

• Bouncer : It allows you to check the status of an email address or several addresses at the same time.
• Neverbounce : This one has the same purpose.
• Scrubby : It will allow you to check all the Catch-all addresses for which you are not sure if they are valid. The delay is a bit long but well worth it!

With these tools you will only keep email addresses that are secure and that will not have a negative impact on the reputation of your domain name.

Spam words to ban for a good email opening rate

Spam words are terms or phrases that email services consider to be red flags that will cause your email to change destination to end up in spam and not in the inbox. To date, the number of forbidden words is very large and detection methods are becoming more and more sophisticated.

The list of spam words to ban

According to Plezi, here is the list of spam words to ban:

Exaggerated claims and promises

• Gratuit
• 100% free
• Refunded
• Gift
• Free call
• No fees
• Free registration
• Free trial
• Free access
• For free
• Reduction
• Rebates
• Best price
• Promotion
• Special promotion
• Special offer
• Compare prices
• For only
• Cheap
• Affordable
• Cost
• Coupon
• 50%

The urgency and the pressure

• Do it quickly
• Urgent!
• Take advantage now
• limited offer
• Right now
• as of today
• Do not hesitate any longer
• Call now
• expires
• limited time
• limited time
• limited quantities
• Out of stock

Suspicious behaviors or innuendos of gain

• You won
• Bravo!
• Open to discover your gift
• Extraordinary gift
• Winner
• You have been chosen
• Congratulations!
• Reward
• For you only
• Guaranteed
• 100% guaranteed
• 100% safe
• Certified
• Without risk
• Incredible deal
• Bonus
• Good deal
• Seen on TV
• Deal
• It works
• Satisfaction guaranteed
• No scam
• Not spam
• Identity
• Password
• No hidden costs
• No risk

Vocabulary specific to money, often related to scams

• Cash
• Money
• Easy
• Fast money
• Earning money
• Additional income
• Benefit
• Millions of dollars
• Save
• Best price
• Euros
• Profits
• Gains
• Your own boss
• Credit card
• Bank card
• Investment
• Bankruptcy
• Income
• Salary
• Interest rate
• Insurance
• Get out of debt
• refund
• Full refund
• Cheque
• Bank transfer
• Debit
• Mortgage
• paypal
• Prime
• Yield
• Visa
• mastercard

Vocabulary specific to sales and marketing

• sales
• Sales
• Increase your sales
• Increase your traffic
• Click here
• Order
• More sales
• Turnover
• Marketing
• Buy
• Increase

Our advice for a better email opening rate

In order to avoid ending up in spam, he therefore has several points to take into account. First of all, you must avoid shooting too many emails because there is a risk that they will not be opened and therefore that the mailbox will put it in spam because of the low opening rate. You can also personalize your emails to make them more engaging. To do this, you need an attractive object, properly segment your database and personalize as much as possible with the name and surname but also the company... Finally, you can also search for words to avoid spam words or simply get rid of them because they may be superfluous.

What to remember

As you can see, the reputation of your email depends on many factors. In other words, if you want to influence your commercial development while doing email campaigns, there are many points to take into account, whether it is the status of the email addresses of your prospects or even spam words, you should not leave out any detail! We include all of these factors in our method.

Finally, the little extra tip, you can heat up your email address with MailReach for example, which will monitor and improve your sender reputation but also identify and solve your spam problems. This tool will start natural conversations with thousands of other high-profile inboxes.