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

    Access your files securely from anywhere







                            Zoho Developer Community




                                                  • Desk Community Learning Series


                                                  • Digest


                                                  • Functions


                                                  • Meetups


                                                  • Kbase


                                                  • Resources


                                                  • Glossary


                                                  • Desk Marketplace


                                                  • MVP Corner


                                                  • Word of the Day


                                                  • Ask the Experts



                                                            • 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


                                                            Manage your brands on social media



                                                                  Zoho TeamInbox Resources



                                                                      Zoho CRM Plus Resources

                                                                        Zoho Books Resources


                                                                          Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                                                                            Zoho Projects Resources


                                                                              Zoho Sprints Resources


                                                                                Qntrl Resources


                                                                                  Zoho Creator Resources



                                                                                      Zoho CRM Resources

                                                                                      • CRM Community Learning Series

                                                                                        CRM Community Learning Series


                                                                                      • Kaizen

                                                                                        Kaizen

                                                                                      • Functions

                                                                                        Functions

                                                                                      • Meetups

                                                                                        Meetups

                                                                                      • Kbase

                                                                                        Kbase

                                                                                      • Resources

                                                                                        Resources

                                                                                      • Digest

                                                                                        Digest

                                                                                      • CRM Marketplace

                                                                                        CRM Marketplace

                                                                                      • MVP Corner

                                                                                        MVP Corner









                                                                                          Design. Discuss. Deliver.

                                                                                          Create visually engaging stories with Zoho Show.

                                                                                          Get Started Now


                                                                                            Zoho Show Resources

                                                                                              Zoho Writer

                                                                                              Get Started. Write Away!

                                                                                              Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                                                                                                Zoho CRM コンテンツ



                                                                                                  Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


                                                                                                      ご検討中の方




                                                                                                              • Recent Topics

                                                                                                              • Recurring Automated Reminders

                                                                                                                Hi, The reminders feature in Zoho Books is a really helpful feature to automate reminders for invoices. However, currently we can set reminders based on number of days before/after the invoice date. It would be really helpful if a recurring reminder feature
                                                                                                              • Zobot Execution Logs & Run History (Similar to Zoho Flow)

                                                                                                                Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, We would like to request an enhancement for Zoho SalesIQ Zobot: adding an execution log / run history, similar to what already exists in Zoho Flow. Reference: Zoho Flow In Zoho Flow, every execution is recorded in the History tab,
                                                                                                              • using the client script based on the look up filed i wnat to fetch the record details like service number , service rate

                                                                                                                based on selected service look up field iwant to fetch the service serial number in the serice form how i achive using client script also how i get the current date in the date field in the on load of the form
                                                                                                              • Importing into Multiselect Picklist

                                                                                                                Hi, We just completed a trade show and one of the bits of information we collect is tool style. The application supplied by the show set this up as individual questions. For example, if the customer used Thick Turret and Trumpf style but not Thin Turret,
                                                                                                              • I need to know the IP address of ZOHO CRM.

                                                                                                                The link below is the IP address for Analytics, do you have CRM's? https://help.zoho.com/portal/ja/kb/analytics/users-guide/import-connect-to-database/cloud-database/articles/zoho-analytics%E3%81%AEip%E3%82%A2%E3%83%89%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B9 I would like to
                                                                                                              • Password Assessment Reports for all users

                                                                                                                I'm the super admin and looking at the reporting available for Zoho Vault. I can see that there is a Password Assessment report available showing the passwords/weak and security score by user. However I'm confused at the 'report generated on' value. Monitor
                                                                                                              • 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
                                                                                                              • Can't change form's original name in URL

                                                                                                                Hi all, I have been duplicating + editing forms for jobs regarding the same department to maintain formatting + styling. The issue I've not run into is because I've duplicated it from an existing form, the URL doesn't seem to want to update with the new
                                                                                                              • How to Print the Data Model Zoho CRM

                                                                                                                I have created the data model in Zoho CRM and I want the ability to Print this. How do we do this please? I want the diagram exported to a PDF. There doesnt appear to be an option to do this. Thanks Andrew
                                                                                                              • Customer ticket creation via Microsoft Teams

                                                                                                                Hi all, I'm looking to see if someone could point me in the right direction. I'd love to make it so my customers/ end users can make tickets, see responses and respond within microsoft teams. As Admin and an Agent i've installed the zoho assist app within
                                                                                                              • 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
                                                                                                              • Setting certian items to be pickup only

                                                                                                                How do we have some items that are pickup only? I have several items in my item's list that I do not ship. But they need to be on the website to be sold, and picked up in store. Need to be able to do this as one of these products is a major seller for
                                                                                                              • Using gift vouchers

                                                                                                                We would like to be able to offer a limited number of gift vouchers, of varying values, to our customers, and are looking for the best way to do this. We have looked at Coupons and Gift Certificates, but neither seem to fit the bill perfectly. Coupons:
                                                                                                              • Automatically updating field(s) of lookup module

                                                                                                                I have a lookup field, which also pulls through the Status field from the linked record. When the lookup is first done, the Status is pulled through - this works perfectly. If that Status is later updated, the lookup field does not update as well. As
                                                                                                              • Zoho Commerce and Third-party shipping (MachShip) API integration

                                                                                                                We are implementing a third-party shipping (MachShip) API integration for our Zoho Commerce store and have made significant progress. However, we need guidance on a specific technical challenge. Current Challenge: We need to get the customer input to
                                                                                                              • Adding custom "lookup" fields in Zoho Customization

                                                                                                                How can I add a second “lookup” field in Zoho? I’m trying to create another lookup that pulls from my Contacts, but the option doesn’t appear in the module customization sidebar. In many cases, a single work order involves multiple contacts. Ideally,
                                                                                                              • 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
                                                                                                              • Allocating inventory to specific SO's

                                                                                                                Is there a way that allocate inventory to a specific sales order? For example, let's say we have 90 items in stock. Customer 1 orders 100 items. This allocates all 90 items to their order, and they have a back order for the remaining 10 items which could
                                                                                                              • Introducing Workqueue: your all-in-one view to manage daily work

                                                                                                                Hello all, We’re excited to introduce a major productivity boost to your CRM experience: Workqueue, a dynamic, all-in-one workspace that brings every important sales activity, approval, and follow-up right to your fingertips. What is Workqueue? Sales
                                                                                                              • Zoho Inventory. Preventing Negative Stock in Sales Orders – Best Practices?

                                                                                                                Dear Zoho Inventory Community, We’re a small business using Zoho Inventory with a team of sales managers. Unfortunately, some employees occasionally overlook stock levels during order processing, leading to negative inventory issues. Is there a way to
                                                                                                              • Automation #10 - Auto Assign Ticket based on Keywords

                                                                                                                This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips on optimizing
                                                                                                              • Automate attendance tracking with Zoho Cliq Developer Platform

                                                                                                                I wish remote work were permanently mandated so we could join work calls from a movie theatre or even while skydiving! But wait, it's time to wake up! The alarm has snoozed twice, and your team has already logged on for the day. Keeping tabs on attendance
                                                                                                              • Reusable Custom Functions Across Department Workflows

                                                                                                                Dear Zoho Desk Team, We appreciate the powerful workflow automation capabilities in Zoho Desk, particularly the ability to create and use custom functions within workflows. However, we have encountered a limitation that impacts efficiency and maintainability.
                                                                                                              • 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
                                                                                                              • Feature Request - Gift Cards or Gift Voucher Capability in Zoho Commerce

                                                                                                                Hi Zoho Commerce team, I'm comming accross more and more retail businesses who sell gift cards. As there is currently no way to manage this in Zoho Commerce, it is a blocker to addoption. This is particularly popular in Europe and North America. I recently
                                                                                                              • Don't Allow Customer to Edit Values After Submitting Ticket

                                                                                                                After a customer submits a ticket through the customer portal, they can go into the ticket and see some of the values from the questions they answered in the sidebar. Currently, a customer can edit these values even after they submitted them. This makes no sense. We ask very specific questions that we don't want customers to later change! Please disable the ability for customers to edit the values to their submission questions in the portal. Screenshot attached.
                                                                                                              • Analytics <-> Invoice Connection DELETED by Zoho

                                                                                                                Hi All, I am reaching out today because of a big issue we have at the moment with Zoho Analytics and Zoho Invoice. Our organization relies on Zoho Analytics for most of our reporting (operationnal teams). A few days ago we observed a sync issue with the
                                                                                                              • text length in list report mobile/tablet

                                                                                                                Is there a way to make the full text of a text field appear in the list report on mobile and tablet? With custom layouts, the text is always truncated after a certain number of characters.
                                                                                                              • Automation #4 - Auto Delete Tickets based on Rules

                                                                                                                This is a monthly series in which we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Unwanted tickets spamming
                                                                                                              • Automation #3 - Auto-sync email attachments to tickets

                                                                                                                This is a monthly series where we pick some common use cases that have been either discussed or most asked about in our community and explain how they can be achieved using one of the automation capabilities in Zoho Desk. Most of our customers use email
                                                                                                              • Automation #11 - Auto Update Custom Fields with Values from Emails

                                                                                                                This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips to optimize
                                                                                                              • Automation #13 - Auto assign tickets based on agent shift time

                                                                                                                This is a monthly series designed to help you get the best out of Desk. We take our cue from what's being discussed or asked about the most in our community. Then we find the right use cases that specifically highlight solutions, ideas and tips to optimize
                                                                                                              • Automation #14: Capture Jira Issue Key/ID in a Ticket Custom Field

                                                                                                                Hello Everyone! This month's edition brings you a custom function to consolidate your records associated with Jira integration. Jira integration enables support engineers and R&D units to collaborate seamlessly on feature development, product improvement,
                                                                                                              • Automation #16: Automate Ticket Reopening on Scheduled Timestamp

                                                                                                                Hello Everyone! This edition uncovers the option to schedule reopening a ticket automatically. Zylker Finance tracks insurance policyholder activities through Zoho Desk. For policyholders who pay monthly premiums, tickets are closed upon payment completion.
                                                                                                              • Automation#19:Auto-Close Tickets Upon Task Completion

                                                                                                                Hello Everyone! We’re excited to bring you another custom function this week. In this edition, we’ll show you how to automatically close tickets when all associated tasks are marked as completed. Let’s see how ZylkaPure, a leading water filter company,
                                                                                                              • Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts

                                                                                                                Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have Terence
                                                                                                              • How to apply customized Zoho Crm Home Page to all users?

                                                                                                                I have tried to study manuals and play with Zoho CRM but haven't found a way how to apply customized Zoho CRM Home Page as a (default) home page for other CRM users.. How that can be done, if possible? - kipi Moderation Update: Currently, each user has
                                                                                                              • City field suggestion in Zoho Books

                                                                                                                Hi team, We are using Customers module in Zoho Books. In the Address section, we want to understand whether the City field can show suggestions while typing using any API or built-in feature. For example, if a user types “Mum”, can the system suggest
                                                                                                              • Improved UX design for Projects CRM integration

                                                                                                                The current integration embeds the entier projects inteface into the CRM this is confusing and allows users to get lost. For example as a user i navigate to an account and go down to the related projects list and want to get information about a specific
                                                                                                              • Link Purchase Order to Deal

                                                                                                                Zoho Books directly syncs with contacts, vendors and products in Zoho CRM including field mapping. Is there any way to associate vendor purchase orders with deals, so that we can calculate our profit margin for each deal with connected sales invoices
                                                                                                              • Next Page