What Is an Email Response Rate and How To Increase It

What is the email response rate and why track it?

Put simply, the response rate is about how many people respond to your emails.

Responses are usually direct email replies, but they can also include feedback sent by other means, such as filled forms on landing pages or surveys in Google Forms. 

Response rate is a more robust metric than click-through rate because it measures engagement beyond a simple click. If you have a very low response rate, it might indicate that subscribers are not motivated enough to take action.

Your average response rate can also be used to assess the quality or effectiveness of the copy. Low numbers mean that you need to take a good look at your copywriting, subject lines, calls to action, and tone.

A good response rate also benefits deliverability. If your clients reply to your emails, this sends a strong message to email providers that you send valuable and relevant content, which reduces the chance of your messages going to a spam folder.

How to measure your response rate

Your response rate is the percentage of people who responded to your email, of everyone who read it. So, the math is:

Note that we divide replies by the number of opens, not the total number of sent emails. That is why the response rate is a very different metric from open rates since we’re filtering only people who at least opened your messages.

What is the average email response rate?

This is a very difficult metric since the response rate varies wildly by segment, industry, type of email, and list size. We did our research and found numbers between 10% and 30% as parameters for “good response rates” (Pointerpro, Genroe), but this broad number is not very useful.

What you should do is build your own benchmark and analyze your metrics over time and different campaigns. From there, you can try our tips to improve on this metric. 

It’s good practice to keep an eye on your response rate. If it’s improving or stable, great! If your response rate starts to drop, that’s an alarm that something may be wrong and needs fixing.

Reasons for low email marketing response rate

If the email response rate is too low, these are the most common culprits:

• Third-party email lists: If you buy an email list, your recipients don’t even know your brand, and they’ll hardly respond. 
• Inactive subscribers: A lot of inactive subscribers will affect your open and response rates. You should prune your lists frequently to send only to interested real people, and not to inactive contacts. 
• Mailing to non-targeted audiences: If you want replies, you need to send your campaigns to the right people. Good response rates mean good segmenting since only your biggest fans or the people most interested in your offer will answer. 
• Promotional content: There is nothing wrong with promotional content, but it’s just not the right option if you want responses. You have to be personal and tone down on being too pushy. 
• Too frequent campaigns: If you send too many emails, you might look desperate or boring, resulting in a steep drop in your response rates.

How can I improve my email response rate?

Just like everything in email marketing, the response rate is not an isolated metric. Everything you do to influence your response rates can also improve your open rates and click-through rates, and vice-versa.

One of the best methods to find ways to get more replies is A/B Testing. When you try different things to check for response rates, you’ll start to see patterns that elicit more and better answers from your subscribers.

Let’s jump in the best tactics to improve email response rate:

Recipient segmentation

A blanket approach won’t work to improve your response rate. You need to segment and send your email only to clients who are really interested in what you offer. 

Basic segmentation also may not be enough. Depending on how you build your lists you may have some basic info already to segment by industry, by position, or some other information provided in the process of subscribing.

With a robust email marketing system, you can be really specific and send that email only to “leads with a senior position that clicked at least one link in the last five messages”, for example, or “most active readers”. 

When you segment your campaigns, the client will have a sense that this email was written just for them, and be inclined to respond, starting a productive conversation.

One of the advantages of segmentation is the possibility to automate your messages via triggered emails. For example, you can send an email two days after a person signs up for your service offering some help, with special triggers like “signed up but didn’t create the first project”, or “didn’t make the first service request”.

You can also automate a follow-up email when your client doesn’t reply to the first one. Here’s how to write a follow-up email.

Human approach

Nobody answers an email by Mr Giant Company Corporation LTD. To improve your response rate, you need to be personal, maybe a little bit informal, and less corporate. Your client needs to see that this email was sent by a real person, not some automated careless system.

• Send from a single-person email address, not a department or generic address like “department@corp” or “corporation@corp”, and especially not from “noreply@corp”. The “from” address should spell a real person like “mattdaemon@corp” or “r.whitherspoon@corp”. 
• Sign with a real person’s name. The email signature needs to contain a real person’s name, the same person who is likely to continue the conversation later. Sometimes, it is ok to sign as the manager when the assistant follows the conversation, as long as it is supervised by the initial contact. 
• Avoid fake people or characters. Some companies try to circumvent this by creating a fictional character. Clients consider it rude when they find out they are not talking to a real person, especially if it proves to be some automated AI.

Personalization

People rarely respond to ads, no matter how perfect your call to action is crafted. To improve your response rates a nice trick is to send a simple email, as if written in the spur of the moment. Yes, it can be automated too, but the message should convey genuine care for the customer on the other side.

So, avoid giant banners, big “buy now” buttons, or intricate copy. Your email can (and should!) have a small banner or logo identifying your company or product, but don’t overdo it.

There is an art to writing great sales emails that should be crafted to look exclusive.

You’ll get better at this if you can use your customer info to craft the perfect message. The bare minimum is the customer’s name on top. But a lot of segmentation info can also help you be specific, for example:

Optimize emails (and landing pages) for mobile

Most people read and write emails on their smartphones. To improve your results, the email must be easy to read on smaller screens. There are many ways to optimize emails for mobile viewing, but the most common aspect you need to keep an eye on is the image sizes. The best practice is to keep image width below 600 px.

If you have text on the image, the font needs to be large enough that it can be read even when the image is displayed on a smaller screen.

Check your content for mobile. Most email marketing services allow you to check your emails on different screen sizes before sending them into the wild. You can also send a test mail to you and open it on your smartphone for a better look.

Also, don’t forget to optimize your landing page (or survey page) for mobile viewing. If your email looks great on a smartphone, but the link you send doesn’t fit the smaller screen, your user won’t bother to scroll left and right to answer you.

Include a clear call to action in your content

Sometimes the recipients don’t even know they can answer your email, or that something is being asked of them. Your best weapon here is a great call to action.

A call to action (CTA) is a phrase included in your email that explains the next step you need your customer to do. In a very busy world, we just don’t have enough time to read carefully every email we get, and the idea of replying or filling out a form slips by.

A good call with action words, like “Click to answer our survey now”, or “Reply to this email to secure your spot” will prompt the subscriber to the next step. Don’t forget to make the call-to-action a button for extra clarity, especially if it redirects to a website.

Throw in some benefit

Let’s be honest, everyone is just too busy to comment about every purchase or request we get. Moreover, most responses in email marketing will help the company, but not so much the client who answered.

You can expect only your biggest fans to be eager to tell you all about their experience with your brand. When you ask for a little time from your subscribers, it helps to offer them something in return.

That’s why to improve your response rate you can throw in a benefit for their help, like a discount coupon, free shipping, or a ticket to enter a sweepstakes with a grand prize.

Conclusion

Every marketer needs to know the metrics of engagement to make sure the content is reaching the right target and always improving step by step. While the most common ones are “open rates” and “click-through rates” they are mostly “cold” metrics, they don’t show what your customer thinks of your brand. Response rates are a better measure of engagement.

To improve your response rates is not as straightforward, but many tricks can help:

• Segment your audience. 
• Personalize your message 
• Write copy that’s less salesy 
• Optimize for mobile 
• Include a clear call to action 
• Offer some benefits 

A subscriber engaging with your brand is someone who tends to keep a valuable relationship.