Marketer's Space: Proven tips to improve open rates – Part II - Online Help | Zoho Campaigns

Hello Marketers!

Welcome back to another post in Marketer's Space!

We're continuing from where we left off a fortnight ago. We ended the previous post discussing the subject line, and we'll continue from there. Let's dive right in.

Pre-header

Pre-header text accompanies the subject line. While the subject line tells your contacts what your campaigns are about, the pre-header text adds detail to it. We strongly recommend having it when you're creating campaigns.

The image below shows an email from Perplexity, wherein both the subject line and pre-header are present.

Here, the pre-header text drives home the point of why you need to use it. If you don't include it, you're missing out on important information you can display to your contacts even before they open your campaigns.

Here are some tips for crafting pre-header text:

• Keep the length between five and 12 words, and 30 to 60 characters. Any longer than that, and the text tends to get truncated and your contacts can't read it fully. Adhering to this length is also essential for making your campaigns mobile-friendly and mobile-responsive.
• Don't repeat what you've already mentioned in the subject line. You're wasting precious space by doing that.
• Place the most important hook in the first few words of your pre-header to grab your contacts' attention.

 
Sender name, from address, and reply-to address 

Let's say Patricia is the owner of Zylker Labs, an AI-centric marketing agency. She's new to this business, so she isn't fully aware of the dos and don'ts in email marketing. Though she sent well-crafted email campaigns to her contacts, she was dismayed to find that even after waiting for a couple of months, she didn't receive a single reply from them.

Upon closer inspection, she discovered that the fault lied with the sender name, sender address, and the reply-to address she had used. She didn't provide a sender name, and her sender and reply-to address was no-reply@zylkerlabs.com.

Zoho Campaigns provides granular control over sender details like these to help you avoid such mishaps. When you're creating an email campaign, you can add sender details such as your Sender Name, Sender email address, and Reply-to Address.

 

While "Sender Name" is not a mandatory field, it's best to specify a personalized or professional sender name, as it helps build trust. In Patricia's example, she can use:

• Patricia as a personable variant
• Patricia | Zylker Labs for a mixture of personableness and professionalism
• Zylker Labs for a simple, professional sender name

Not having a sender name will put off your contacts; they won't be tempted to open your emails.

Note: Zoho Campaigns automatically displays your sender address as the sender name if its left empty. 

If you use no-reply email addresses as your sender and reply-to addresses, you're telling your contacts not to communicate with you, which is a red flag. Instead use something like patricia@zylkerlabs.com, support@zylkerlabs.com, or help@zylkerlabs.com as your sender address. The same applies to your reply-to address, but if you wish to track the replies in a separate inbox, you can use a different address like mail-to@zylkerlabs.com or team@zylkerlabs.com.

Get consent

Let's say Julie has built a signup form using Zoho Campaigns and embedded it in her website (https://zylkerfashions.com) to attract customers. Many customers have signed up via the form to receive communications from her. Julie is excited and starts sending them campaigns. Soon, she realizes that half of these customers either marked her campaigns as spam, didn't reply, or unsubscribed—and that some campaigns didn't get delivered at all. Naturally, Julie is disappointed and frustrated, as she doesn't understand what went wrong.

Upon checking, Julie realizes that she didn't follow double opt-in to get consent from her customers. While you may assume that because people have signed up via your website, that means they're ready to receive campaigns—we strongly advise that you always confirm with them once.

Go to Settings > Manage Opt-in to enable double opt-in in Zoho Campaigns.



As soon as your contacts sign up via a signup form, Zoho Campaigns will automatically send a confirmation email that asks them to confirm their email address. Once they've confirmed, they'll be added as contacts in Zoho Campaigns. This is done to ensure that:

• Your contacts are genuinely interested in receiving communications.
• If they've specified an incorrect email during sign-up, the double opt-in email won't reach them, so they won't get added to Zoho Campaigns.
• You can avoid unnecessary unsubscribes, spam, and abuse complaints.
• Your mailing list remains clean, so you don't send campaigns to invalid email addresses, which can negatively affect your email deliverability.

 

Warm up your sender domain 

If you're starting out or haven't sent emails for quite some time, your sender domain is new or dormant—which means you have a cold domain.

Let's say you've imported 10,000 new contacts, and in your eagerness to start your marketing journey, you've sent campaigns to all of them at once—something called as an email blast. You should avoid this, because you can trigger the spam filters of email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook, which not only leads to your campaigns being marked as spam, but also to rejection.

Sending from a cold domain affects your email deliverability negatively. Your domain can ultimately get blacklisted due to poor reputation, as well, which means you'll lose out on the opportunity to do business.

Hence, it's vital to warm up your domain by sending your campaigns in equal or incremental batches. For example, you can send 1,000 campaigns per day for 10 days or increase the number each day number from 1,000 to 1,250 to 1,500, and so on.

We've explored essential techniques to boost your email open rates, from crafting smarter pre-headers to warming up your sender domain for better deliverability. Apply these practices consistently to build trust and achieve long-term campaign success.

In two weeks' time, you'll be reading the final part of this series.

Happy marketing!

Kind regards,

Sai Prashanth

User Education

Zoho Campaigns

• Topic Participants

• Sai PrashanthR

  

• Sticky Posts

• Marketer's Space: Proven tips to improve open rates – Part II

  Hello Marketers! Welcome back to another post in Marketer's Space! We're continuing from where we left off a fortnight ago. We ended the previous post discussing the subject line, and we'll continue from there. Let's dive right in. Pre-header Pre-header

• Tip of the week 03 - Sending emails in batches

  Today's marketers not only want their email marketing to be efficient, but also smart. For an email campaign, you may think you have all the essential elements for lead conversion—a big mailing list, an attractive template design, and the most-engaging message content, but after hitting the ‘send’ button, you may not get the expected conversions. Wondering why? Here’s one of the major reasons. Many marketers miss out on sending the email campaign the right way. Did you know that you should not be

• Tip of the week 04 - Know about your recipients' 'prime open time.'

  In today's market, the importance of customer behavior is astounding, with a vast amount of research and resources going into finding how customers make decisions. The process of persuading your customers to open your email and click on your call-to-action becomes easy when you understand the psychology behind their behavioral traits. Time to turn into a psychologist! Let's get to the basics—you want your emails to resonate well with your recipients. So, what's the primary thing involved here? It's

• Zoho Campaigns Expert Diaries on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

  Hi email champs,  As email marketers, we find great lessons in each other's works—be it the subject lines that worked good, the design that was received well, or the CTA that had the maximum clicks. Email marketing encompasses a wide variety of topics spanning everything from creation and design to development and deliverability.  Here's when we from the Zoho Campaigns team found the need to build an email marketing community comprising of seasoned marketers and email geeks who can help each other

• Email Deliverability Tip #3: Seal the deal with the preheader

  In the last post, we learned about the subject line. Today we'll be learning about the preheader. A preheader is the short text that follows the subject line in an email. The preheader is designed to hint at what your email message is all about. A good preheader should act as a second subject line and convince your contacts to open the email. Now, let's learn the best way to craft a preheader. Your subject line and preheader should work together and accurately convey the gist of your email. Keep

• Recent Topics

• Client Script | Update - Client Script Support For Custom Buttons

  Hello everyone! We are excited to announce one of the most requested features - Client Script support for Custom Buttons. This enhancement lets you run custom logic on button actions, giving you greater flexibility and control over your user interactions.

• Export all of our manuals from Zoho Learn in one go

  Hi, I know there's a way to export manuals in Zoho Learn, but I want to export everything in one go so it won't take so long. I can't see a way to do this, can I get some assistance or is this a feature in the pipeline? Thanks, Hannah

• Automation#31: Automate Splitting Names for New Contact Records

  Hello Everyone, This week, we present to you a custom function, which allows you to split the first and last names from the user's email ID based on the separator used in the ID. Having grown into a large firm, Zylker Techfix aims to optimize its processes,

• WhatsApp IM in Zoho Desk always routes to Admin instead of assigned agent

  Hello Zoho Experts, I connected WhatsApp IM to my Zoho Desk account. I only assigned my Customer Service (CS) agent to the WhatsApp channel, and I did NOT include Admin in this channel. However, every new WhatsApp conversation automatically gets assigned

• Automatically remove commas

  Team, Please be consistent in Zoho Books. In Payments, you have commas here: But when we copy and paste the amount in the Payments Made field, it does not accept it because the default setting is no commas. Please have Zoho Books remove commas autom

• Can not add m365 outlook account to zohomail.

  I am attempting to use zoho mail as an imap client to add my outlook.com m365 account. In the m365 exchange admin center i have made sure the imap is enabled. In zoho mail i go to settings, mail accounts, add account, add imap account, i select "outlook",

• Email was sent out without our permission

  Hi there, One customer just reached out to us about this email that we were not aware was being sent to our customers. Can you please check on your end?

• local file csv import problem

  The issue occurs when I upload a CSV file via Databridge. In the preview, everything looks correct — the values are in the proper columns. However, after clicking Import, the first column becomes empty, and the values from that column appear in a new

• Remove Powered by Zoho at the footer

  Hi, I've read two past tickets regarding this but it seems that the instructions given are outdated. I assume the layout keeps on changing, which makes it frustrating for me to search high and low. Please let me know how exactly do I do this now? Th

• Error AS101 when adding new email alias

  Hi, I am trying to add apple@(mydomain).com The error AS101 is shown while I try to add the alias.

• Transfer ownership of files and folders in My Folders

  People work together as a team to achieve organizational goals and objectives. In an organization, there may be situations when someone leaves unexpectedly or is no longer available. This can put their team in a difficult position, especially if there

• ZOHO Desk - Description of slave ticket disappeared after Merge

  Dear Support, On Zoho Desk the description of a ticket disappeared after merging two ticket. The one which was the slave one completely disappeared. The problem that in this description there was an image which i had only on Desk in that ticket. Could

• How do I insert a cross-reference link to a different section within one Knowledge Base article using Zoho Desk?

  I would like to insert a link within a Knowledge Base article to a different section of that same article. The section I want to link to is formatted with the Heading 3 style and is displayed within my TOC. However, I do not see any way to add a link

• Problem Adding Facebook Account

  Hi, I'm new here, I'm having trouble setting up my Facebook account as a social channel. I think the issue is down to how my Facebook is set up, which is pretty confusing. I have a personal Facebook account (let’s called it A) which is my main Facebook

• Zoho Desk Teams App is not loading

  Hi Zoho Desk support. Need an assistance on the Zoho Desk Teams app. Once I click View Ticket, it isn't showing anything. Kindly refer to attached: ZohoDesk Teams App_View Ticket Error.jpg For our Dashboard, we are still experiencing the same issue. Kindly

• About Meetings (Events module)

  I was working on an automation to cancel appointments in zoho flow , and in our case, we're using the Meetings module (which is called Events in API terms). But while working with it, I'm wondering what information I can display in the image where the

• Add Ticket button in Home view

  When I go to the My Tickets or the Knowledge Base view in our Help Centre, the Add Ticket button is available, but not in the Home view. I would really like for it to be displayed in the Home view as well. Is this possible? Thanks.

• Zoho CRM for Everyone's NextGen UI Gets an Upgrade

  Hello Everyone We've made improvements to Zoho CRM for Everyone's Nextgen UI. These changes are the result of valuable feedback from you where we’ve focused on improving usability, providing wider screen space, and making navigation smoother so everything

• Cliq iOS can't see shared screen

  Hello, I had this morning a video call with a colleague. She is using Cliq Desktop MacOS and wanted to share her screen with me. I'm on iPad. I noticed, while she shared her screen, I could only see her video, but not the shared screen... Does Cliq iOS is able to display shared screen, or is it somewhere else to be found ? Regards

• Zoho People - Retrieve the Leave Details - get("LeaveCount")

  Hi, Zoho People I need to collect all of an employee's leave requests for the calendar year and check how many half-days they have taken. If I run the script on the query he just modified, I can retrieve the information related to that query and use the

• Contact data removes Account data when creating a quote

  Hi, Our customer has address fields in their quote layout which should be the address of the Account. They prefill the information, adding the account name - the address data is populated as per what is in the account - great. However when they then add

• Mapping a new Ticket in Zoho Desk to an Account or Deal in Zoho CRM manually

  Is there any way for me to map an existing ticket in Zoho desk to an account or Deal within Zoho CRM? Sometimes people use different email to put in a ticket than the one that we have in the CRM, but it's still the same person. We would like to be able

• I need to know the IP address of ZOHO CRM.

  The link below is the IP address for Analytics, do you have CRM's? IP address for Analytics I would like to know the IP address of ZOHO CRM to allow communication as the API server I am developing is also run from CRM.

• Which WhatsApp API works seamlessly with Zoho CRM?

  I’m exploring WhatsApp API solutions that integrate seamlessly with Zoho CRM for customer communication, lead nurturing, and automation. I would love to hear insights from those who have successfully implemented WhatsApp within Zoho CRM. My Requirements:

• Allow people to sign a zoho form by using esign or scanned signature

  Allow people to sign a zoho form by using esign or scanned signature

• Button to Reapply Filters on Sheet(s)

  I wrote a macro that I attached to a button to reapply the filters on all my sheets and it says it works, but it doesn't actually do anything. What is wrong with it? Is there another way? Or even make it work for one sheet? Sub UniversalFilterRefresh()

• Outlook - Zoho CRM Calendar Integration

  I'm facing an issue integrating Outlook with Zoho CRM. Has anyone successfully connected their Outlook to Zoho, and are all your meetings and emails being captured correctly in the CRM? Any insights or troubleshooting tips would be appreciated

• Zoho OAuth Connector Deprecation and Its Impact on Zoho Desk

  Hello everyone, Zoho believes in continuously refining its integrations to uphold the highest standards of security, reliability, and compliance. As part of this ongoing improvement, the Zoho OAuth default connector will be deprecated for all Zoho services

• How to drag row(s) or column(s)?

  Hi. Selecting a row or column and then dragging it to a new position does not seem to work. Am i missing something or this is just not possible in Zoho Sheet? Cheers, Jay

• Flexible Partial-Use Coupons (Stored Value Credits)

  Subject: Feature Request: Ability for users to apply partial coupon balances per transaction Problem Statement Currently, our coupons are "one-and-done." If a user has a $50 coupon but only spends $30, they either lose the remaining $20 or are forced

• Unable to Assign Multiple Categories to a Single Product in Zoho Commerce

  Hello Zoho Commerce Support Team, I am facing an issue while assigning categories to products in Zoho Commerce. I want to assign multiple categories to a single product, but in the Item edit page, the Category field allows selecting only one category

• How do I add todays date to merge field

  I don't see any selection of todays date when creating a letter. Surely the date option of printing is standard? John

• Polish signer experience to compete with docusign

  I would like to suggest that someone spend the little bit of time to polish the signer experience, and the email templates to more of a modern professional feel. They are currently very early 2000s and with some simple changes could vastly improve the

• Add RTL and Hebrew Support for Candidate Portal (and Other Zoho Recruit Portals)

  Dear Zoho Recruit Team, I hope you're doing well. We would like to request the ability to set the Candidate Portal to be Right-to-Left (RTL) and in Hebrew, similar to the existing functionality for the Career Site. Currently, when we set the Career Site

• Uplifted homepage experience

  Hello everyone, Creating your homepage is now much easier, more visual, and more impactful. Until now, your homepage allowed you to display custom views, widgets, analytic components, and Kiosk. With the following improvements, the homepage is now a smarter,

• Add an background image to an email template in CRM

  Hi all, We wants to put an background image behind all our email templates. Is there a way to import this thru html. If i put the option background image in <body style="background-image:...</body> and i look to the preview it shows our background, but

• Tracking Emails sent through Outlook

  All of our sales team have their Outlook 365 accounts setup with IMAP integration. We're trying to track their email activity that occurs outside the CRM. I can see the email exchanges between the sales people and the clients in the contact module. But

• Whats that

  Price?

• Crossbeam

  Does anyone use Crossbeam with their Zoho CRM? I'm looking for a way to import Crossbeam partner leads into Zoho CRM. If so: - What's your experience been like? - Are you able to automatically import Crossbeam leads > Zoho CRM? How? - What doesn't work

• The same Contact associated to multiple Companies - Deals

  Hi, I would like to know if there is an option to associate the same contact with multiple companies (two or more) deals, using the same contact details for all. This is because we have contacts who are linked to different companies or branches of the

• Next Page