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

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.

NotesNote: 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

    • 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

    • Zoho People > Performance Management > Appraisal cycle

      Hello All I am using this 2 users to test out how it work on Performance Management User 1 - Reportee User 2 - Reporting Manager : Li Ting Haley User 1 : Self Appraisal Error How do i fix this error?

    • SalesIQ Tip for Admins: Guide Operators in Real-time Without Interrupting the Chat

      Consider this. You're a supervisor and you're looking through the active conversations. An associate is mid-chat with a high-value prospect. The prospect asks something unexpected, maybe about a tailor-made subscription plan or a bulk discount that’s

    • Early Access: Check Printing in Zoho Books

      Hello Everyone,   Are you constantly writing checks to pay your vendors?   We've got a great news to share with you! You can now pay your vendors by writing and printing a check directly from Zoho Books. The feature is ready and we'll be rolling it out to our customers in phases.  It is available in the  US Edition of Zoho Books and also in the Global edition, where the country is selected as USA and the currency is USD.   Here’s a summary of what’s possible:   1. Write and print a check. 2. Make

    • Connecting Zoho Inventory to ShipStation

      we are looking for someone to help connect via API shipStation with Zoho inventory. Any ideas? Thanks. Uri

    • Syncing zoho books into zoho crm

      I was wondering how I can use zoho books in crm as I have been using them separately and would like to sync the two. Is this possible and if so, how? Thanks

    • Zoho no support response.

      Problem is Zoho support seems to be just a concept. Just completing my trial, am ready to purchae 3 user subscriptions pending answer to a question, submitted two suport request during my trial that weren't responded to. Gave up trying the 888 line. Hard to imagine my production data in hosting environment with no support response.

    • Updating transaction number series for fiscal year 2026-2027 in Zoho POS

      A fiscal year or financial year is a 12-month period that businesses follow to manage and track their financial activities such as expenses, revenue, and taxes. This doesn't need to match the calendar year (JAN-DEC) and varies based on region, and tax

    • Lack of Looping and Carry-Forward Functionality in Zoho Survey

      Zoho Survey currently does not support looping or carry-forward functionality, meaning it is not possible to dynamically generate follow-up questions based on each option selected in a previous question or to pipe selected responses (such as {Looping

    • Forecast in Zoho CRM Just Got Smarter with an upgraded Zia Intelligence

      Hello Everyone, We are here with an interesting enhancement to Forecasts in Zoho CRM — Enhanced Zia Insights for your sales Forecast. Imagine a regional sales manager reviewing their team’s performance using forecasts in Zoho CRM. Instead of switching

    • Update TDS and TCS rates for Income Tax Act, 2025 (effective April 1, 2026)

      Hello everyone, The Income-tax Rules, 2026 (G.S.R. 198(E), dated March 20, 2026) have been notified, marking a significant structural shift in India’s direct tax framework. From April 1, 2026, the Income Tax Act, 2025 replaces the Income Tax Act, 1961.

    • Service line items

      Hello Latha, Could you please let me know the maximum number of service line items that can be added to a single work order? Thanks, Chethiya.

    • Automation Series: Auto-assign Resources as Task Owners

      In Zoho Projects, task ownership can be set automatically during task creation, allowing resources to be assigned based on the task name. Resources are work equipment or tools added to the portal to monitor their usage across projects. They can be assigned

    • Subform edits don't appear in parent record timeline?

      Is it possible to have subform edits (like add row/delete row) appear in the Timeline for parent records? A user can edit a record, only edit the subform, and it doesn't appear in the timeline. Is there a workaround or way that we can show when a user

    • AI secretary

      In our company, Claude is the secretary and creates inquiries and schedules from Gmail. You no longer have to enter them yourself. The secret is that we created an MCP server that connects to CRM. https://x.com/Mac_nishio/status/1917954562566328694

    • 5 small changes to Recruit that make a big difference

      Sometimes, the biggest improvements aren’t new features, they’re small changes that make everyday actions feel smoother. Over the past few weeks, we’ve made a few such updates across Zoho Recruit. They’re subtle, but together, they remove friction from

    • Project Management Bulletin: March, 2026

      We are passionate about equipping our users with efficient solutions that help them run their businesses successfully. Our collective efforts over the past 2 years have culminated in the launch of Sprints 3.0— built with reliable features, impactful integrations,

    • New security enhancements for portal users: MFA and password management

      Hello everyone, We are excited to announce three major security enhancements that are now available to portal users in Zoho CRM: Organization-wide multi-authentication for portal users - Admins can enforce multi-factor authentication across the entire

    • [Free Webinar] Learning Table Series 2026 – Customer agreement & contract management using Zoho Creator

      Hello everyone, We’re excited to announce the next session in Learning Table Series 2026, where we will continue with our purpose-driven approach—focusing on how Zoho Creator’s features help solve real-world business challenges. Each session in this series

    • Zoho Payroll's USA and KSA editions are available in Zoho One!

      Greetings! We’re excited to share that Zoho Payroll, currently available only in India and the UAE, is now introducing the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) edition and the USA (United States of America) edition, and these editions are now available in Zoho

    • Looking for Guidance on Building a Zoho Website

      I'm exploring the possibility of building a custom website with specific features using Zoho as an alternative platform. My goal is to create something similar to https://gtasandresapk.com , with the same kind of functionality and user experience. I'd

    • Multilingual website feature

      Would be a great feature to have. I saw that this feature was available for backstage. I think it could be done for zoho sites too.

    • [Webinar] Modernize your sales engine with agentic analytics

      Traditional sales decision-making methods aren't cut out for modern businesses. Leveraging AI in sales helps businesses actively respond to the changing dynamics of the market. Agentic AI is letting sales teams across industries make better decisions

    • Built-in Date Functions in Zoho Analytics Query Tables

      I have a doubt about whether Zoho Analytics Query Tables provide built-in functions for start date, end date, and the current month

    • Zoho Commerce in multiple languages

      When will you be able to offer Zoho Commerce in more languages? We sell in multiple markets and want to be able to offer a local version of our webshop. What does the roadmap look like?

    • Nimble enhancements to WhatsApp for Business integration in Zoho CRM: Enjoy context and clarity in business messaging

      Dear Customers, We hope you're well! WhatsApp for business is a renowned business messaging platform that takes your business closer to your customers; it gives your business the power of personalized outreach. Using the WhatsApp for Business integration

    • Connectivity issues with Google Calendar and third-party integrations

      Description: We are currently experiencing a critical failure with Zoho CRM third-party connections. This issue is heavily affecting our primary workflow. Symptoms: Sync Failure: Existing Zoho CRM to Google Calendar connections have been failing for approximately

    • Dynamic image in form works in the app but not on the customer portal.

      img = frm_Fichas[ID == input.Nombre].Foto; imgno = Nophoto[ID2 = 1].Image; if(len(img) > 1) { img = img.replaceAll("/sharedBy/appLinkName/",zoho.appuri); img = img.replaceAll("viewLinkName","Fichas_de_personal_public"); img = img.replaceAll("fieldName","Foto");

    • Incorrect Functioning of Time Logs API (Version 3)

      We need to fetch the list of time logs for each task for our company internal usage. We are trying to achieve it by using the next endpoint: https://projects.zoho.com/api-docs#bulk-time-logs#get-all-project-time-logs Firstly, in the documentation the

    • How can I export all Deluge code across the application?

      I’m working on a application with multiple forms, reports, and HTML views, where Deluge scripts are used across workflows, field actions, and custom functions. Is there a way to export all Deluge scripts into a single file for easier search?

    • First Name in Mail

      While sending a mail/message to the user, I want only the first name to be displayed—for example: “Hi John” instead of the full name using "Hi ${Name_Field}"

    • Can you import projects into Zoho Projects yet?

      I see some very old posts asking about importing project records into Zoho Projects. But I can't find anything up to date about the topic. Has this functionality been added? Importing tasks is helpful. But we do have a project where importing projects

    • Updating Sales orders on hold

      Surely updating irrelevant fields such as shipping date should be allowed when sales orders are awaiting back orders? Maybe the PO is going to be late arriving so we have to change the shipment date of the Sales order ! Not even allowed through the api - {"code":36014,"message":"Sales orders that have been shipped or on hold cannot be updated."}

    • Zoho Social API for generating draft posts from a third-party app ?

      Hello everyone, I hope you are all well. I have a question regarding Zoho Social. I am developing an application that generates social media posts, and I would like to be able to incorporate a feature that allows saving these posts as drafts in Zoho Social.

    • Deleting unwanted ticket replies

      Hello, In a Zoho Desk Ticket thread, sometimes one of the recipients has auto-reply activated. This creates a new message in the Ticket thread that not only pollutes the thread, but most importantly cannot be replied properly because usually auto-reply e-mails don't do "reply all", so the other recipients are not included. I want to delete such a message in the Ticket thread. I searched the help of Zoho Desk, but only found a way to mark as Spam (https://help.zoho.com/portal/kb/articles/marking-support-tickets-as-spam)

    • Issue updating Multi-Select Picklist via API (saves as string instead of checking boxes)

      Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone can point out what I'm doing wrong here. I'm stuck trying to update a custom multi-select field via the Desk API and it's driving me a bit crazy. I have a multi-select picklist called "Buy years" with options like 2023,

    • Page variable not receiving URL parameter in Creator 6 HTML snippet Deluge — Canada DC

      I have a Creator 6 app on Canada DC. I'm trying to pass a URL parameter to an HTML snippet page via Deluge but the variable always returns empty. Setup: Page: MYC_Meeting_Tool Page variable declared: submission_id, type Text Page Script tab contains:

    • Zoho Campaigns API endpoint for contact details

      there is some REST API support for Zoho Campaigns, however, I am not able to find an endpoint for "get contact details".  in particular, I'd like to access contact's subscription status and also their topic. ideally there is all profile available including

    • Migrating Documentation from Notion to Zoho Help Centre

      Hi there, We have a large chunk of documentation that currently sits on Notion. However, we are eager to move this into our Zoho Help Centre/Knowledge Base. What is the most efficient way of achieving this?

    • Can't add attachment on email template

      The attachment does show up. This is my template. Hi ${Cases.Assigned Programmers}, Please be reminded about the following task that has been assigned to you. Subject : ${Cases.Subject} Description : ${Cases.Description} Ticket # : ${Cases.Request Id}

    • Edit a previous reconciliation

      I realized that during my March bank reconciliation, I chose the wrong check to reconcile (they were for the same amount on the same date, I just chose the wrong check to reconcile). So now, the incorrect check is showing as un-reconciled. Is there any way I can edit a previous reconciliation (this is 7 months ago) so I can adjust the check that was reconciled? The amounts are exactly the same and it won't change my ending balance.

    • Next Page