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

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



Hello Marketers!

Welcome back to another post in Marketer's Space!

In this week's post, we'll discuss the ever-important concept of open rates. This will be a multi-part series, as we have a range of topics to cover.

Open rates—which measure the percentage of your emails that recipients open—are an important performance metric in marketing, as they tell you how much engagement your emails are getting. If you have low open rates, it's time to re-think your entire emailing strategy.

This guide is useful not only for marketers who are struggling to get their campaigns opened, but also for seasoned veterans who might want to revisit their current setup. Let's jump in.

Sender domain 

We suggest using your own sender domain to send emails instead of using Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo Mail, as yours will have authenticity and help build trust among your contacts. Be sure to register your account with Zoho Campaigns using an email address with your website's domain name (if you have one).
 
 

For example, let's say Zylker Fashions is an apparel shop and its website is https://www.zylkerfashions.com. Its email addresses therefore use that domain name: @zylkerfashions.com. Examples might include help@zylkerfashions.com, support@zylkerfashions.com, and patricia.b@zylkerfashions.com. When recipients see that your email comes from your official domain, they'll know to trust you.

Domain authentication 

After registering your sender domain with Zoho Campaigns, we strongly recommend you authenticate it by publishing your domain's SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. To ensure low spam rates, improve email deliverability, and, most importantly, to land your campaigns in your recipients' main inboxes (where all important emails show up), domain authentication is necessary. If contacts see your emails there, there's a higher chance they'll open them—thereby increasing your open rate.
 
Segmenting

After importing or adding contacts in Zoho Campaigns, you can group them into segments and then tailor your content based on each segment's interests. Nobody likes to receive campaigns they aren't interested in. Without segmentation, many of your recipients will receive emails from you they don't want—which will tank your open rate. Instead, with just a few clicks, you can create dynamic segments based on the following types of audience data you have:
  • Demographics: Details personal aspects like age, gender, and where someone lives—all of which can shape what they prefer.
  • Firmographics: Details attributes of businesses for B2B scenarios, such as company size, industry, and the roles of specific contacts.
  • Psychographics: Relates to what recipients are into, what they value, and their general lifestyle.
  • Behaviors: Relates to what they've bought before, what they've browsed, and how they usually interact or engage.


 Subject line 

Just landing your campaigns in your recipients' inboxes doesn't mean your job is done; you need to get them to open them, too. And what makes your contacts to open your emails is what they see. The subject line you choose is what they see first. If it doesn't pique their interest, they won't bother opening your email—and if they keep declining to open them, your open rates will take a hit. Recipients might even consider your emails a nuisance and ultimately mark them as spam or unsubscribe.

Crafting engaging subject lines is an art, as you're forced to say more with less. Below are some examples of good subject lines.
  • Limit it to around 30 to 50 characters.
    We saved these picks based on your vibe
  • Create urgency (but not a lot).
    “Thought you'd want to see this soon”
  • Use emojis—but don't overuse them.
    “Skills that boost your career 🚀”
  • Personalize them by using your contacts' first names. Merge tags in Zoho Campaigns are your best friend.
    Patricia! Forgot something? We saved it for you 🛒”

We advise you to take extra care in not using spam trigger words and phrases like "Free!!!", "Buy now", "Limited-time only", "Congratulations! You've been selected", and "Hurry!"

We've come to the end of the first part of this series on open rates. We'll take a look at aspects like pre-headers, domain warm-up, and more in the upcoming parts.


Happy marketing!

Sincerely,
Sai Prashanth
User Education
Zoho Campaigns


      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

            Zoho Books Resources


              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                Zoho Projects Resources


                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                    Zoho Orchestly Resources


                      Zoho Creator Resources


                        Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                          Zoho CRM Resources

                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                            CRM Community Learning Series


                          • Tips

                            Tips

                          • Functions

                            Functions

                          • Meetups

                            Meetups

                          • Kbase

                            Kbase

                          • Resources

                            Resources

                          • Digest

                            Digest

                          • CRM Marketplace

                            CRM Marketplace

                          • MVP Corner

                            MVP Corner




                            Zoho Writer Writer

                            Get Started. Write Away!

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

                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ



                                ご検討中の方

                                  • Recent Topics

                                  • Zoho Books blocks invoicing without VeriFactu even though it is not mandatory until 2027

                                    I would like to highlight a very serious issue in Zoho Books for Spain. 1. The Spanish government has postponed the mandatory start of VeriFactu to January 1st, 2027. This means that during all of 2026 businesses are NOT required to transmit invoices
                                  • Problem : Auto redirect from zoho flow to zoho creator

                                    Hi there, I've been waiting for zoho team to get back on this for last couple of days. Anyone else have the problem to access zoho flow? everytime I click on zoho flow it redirects me to zoho creator. I tried incognito mode but it still direct me to zoho
                                  • Automate pushing Zoho CRM backups into Zoho WorkDrive

                                    Through our Zoho One subscription we have both Zoho CRM and Zoho WorkDrive. We have regular backups setup in Zoho CRM. Once the backup is created, we are notified. Since we want to keep these backups for more than 7 days, we manually download them. They
                                  • How to link tickets to a Vendor/Vendor Contact (not Customer) for Accounting Department?

                                    Hi all, We’re configuring our Accounting department to handle tickets from both customers and vendors (our independent contractors). Right now, ticket association seems to be built around linking a ticket to a Customer / Customer Contact, but for vendor-originated
                                  • Automation #7 - Auto-update Email Content to a Ticket

                                    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. Email is one of the most commonly
                                  • Learner transcript Challenges.

                                    Currently i am working on a Learner Transcript app for my employer using Zoho Creator. The app is expected to accept assessment inputs from tutors, go through an approval process and upon call up, displays all assessments associated with a learner in
                                  • Client and Vendor Portal

                                    Some clients like keeping tabs on the developments and hence would like to be notified of the progress. Continuous updates can be tedious and time-consuming. Zoho Sprints has now introduced a Client and Vendor Portal where you can add client users and
                                  • #7 Tip of the week: Delegating approvals in Zoho People

                                    With Zoho People, absences need not keep employees waiting with their approval requests. When you are not available at work, you can delegate approvals that come your way to your fellow workmate and let them take care of your approvals temporarily. Learn more!
                                  • Trouble with using Apostrophe in Name of Customers and Vendors

                                    We have had an ongoing issue with how the system recognizes an apostrophe in the name of customers and vendors. The search will not return any results for a name that includes the mark; ie one of our vendors names is "L'Heritage" and when entering the
                                  • Why am I seeing deleted records in Zoho Analytics syncing with Zoho CRM?

                                    I have done a data sync between Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics, and the recycle bin is empty. Why do I see deleted leads/deals/contacts in Zoho Analytics if it doesn't exist in Zoho CRM? How can I solve this problem? Thanks
                                  • Nueva edición de "Ask The Expert" en Español Zoho Community

                                    ¡Hola Comunidad! ¿Te gustaría obtener respuestas en directo sobre Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk u otra solución dentro de nuestro paquete de CX (Experiencia del Cliente? Uno de nuestros expertos estará disponible para responder a todas tus preguntas durante nuestra
                                  • How to use MAIL without Dashboard?

                                    Whenever I open Mail, it opens Dashboard. This makes Mail area very small and also I cannot manage Folders (like delete/rename) etc. I want to know if there is any way to open only Mail apps and not the Dashboard.
                                  • Peppol: Accept Bill (Belgium)

                                    Hi, This topic might help you if you're facing the same in Belgium. We are facing an issue while accepting a supplier bill received by Peppol in Zoho Books. There is a popup with an error message: This bill acceptance could not be completed, so it was
                                  • Zoho Books is now integrated with Zoho Checkout

                                    Hello everyone,   We're glad to be announcing that Zoho Books is now integrated with Zoho Checkout. With this integration, you can now handle taxes and accounting on your payment pages with ease.   An organization you create in Zoho Checkout can be added to Zoho Books and vice-versa. Some of the key features and benefits you will receive are:   Seamless sync of customer and invoice data With the end-to-end integration, the customer and invoice details recorded via the payment pages from Zoho Checkout
                                  • Sync Issue

                                    My Current plan only allows me with 10,000 rows and it is getting sync failure how to control it without upgrading my plan
                                  • Is there API Doc for Zoho Survey?

                                    Hi everyone, Is there API doc for Zoho Survey? Currently evaluating a solution - use case to automate survey administration especially for internal use. But after a brief search, I couldn't find API doc for this. So I thought I should ask here. Than
                                  • Add Zoho PDF to Zoho One Tool Applications

                                    It should be easy to add from here without the hassle of creating a web tab:
                                  • JOB WISE INVOICE PROCESS

                                    I WANT TO ENABLE JOB WISE TRACKING OF ALL SALES AND PURCHASE
                                  • PDF Template have QTY as first column

                                    I want to have the QTY of an item on the sales orders and invoices to be the first column, then description, then pricing. Is there a way to change the order? I went to the Items tab in settings but don't see how to change the order of the columns on
                                  • RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) Type Q+A Environment with Zoho Learn

                                    Hi All, Given the ability of Zoho Learn to function as a knowledge base / document repository type solution and given the rapid advancements that Zoho is making with Zia LLM, agentic capabilities etc. (not to mention the rapid progress in the broader
                                  • Welcome to the Zoho ERP Community Forum

                                    Hello everyone, We are thrilled to launch Zoho ERP (India edition), a software to manage your business operations from end to end. We’ve created this community forum as a space for you to ask questions, comment answers, provide feedback, and share your
                                  • In App Auto Refresh/Update Features

                                    Hi,    I am trying to use Zoho Creator for Restaurant management. While using the android apps, I reliased the apps would not auto refresh if there is new entries i.e new kitchen order ticket (KOT) from other users.   The apps does received notification but would not auto refresh, users required to refresh the apps manually in order to see the new KOT in the apps.    I am wondering why this features is not implemented? Or is this feature being considered to be implemented in the future? With the
                                  • Consolidated report for multi-organisation

                                    I'm hoping to see this feature to be available but couldn't locate in anywhere in the trial version. Is this supported? The main aim to go to ERP is to have visibility of the multi-organisation in once place. I'm hopeful for this.
                                  • IMAP mail after specify date

                                    Hi My customer's mail server is on premise and mail storage is very huge. So It never finish sync. and finally stop sync. Cloud CRM have a option like zoho mail sync mail after some date.
                                  • 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
                                  • Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM Integration – AI-Powered Sales Automation

                                    Hello Zoho Community 👋 I’m excited to share a recent integration we’ve worked on at OfficehubTech: ✅ Claude + MCP Server + Zoho CRM This integration connects Zoho CRM with Claude AI through our custom MCP Server, enabling intelligent AI-driven responses
                                  • Notes badge as a quick action in the list view

                                    Hello all, We are introducing the Notes badge in the list view of all modules as a quick action you can perform for each record, in addition to the existing Activity badge. With this enhancement, users will have quick visibility into the notes associated
                                  • Search Bar positioning

                                    Why is the Search bar on the far right when everything is oriented towards the left?
                                  • Basic Mass Update deluge schedule not working

                                    I'm trying to create a schedule that will 'reset' a single field to 0 every morning - so that another schedule can repopulate with the day's calculation. I thought this would be fairly simple but I can't work out why this is failing : 1) I'm based in
                                  • The Social Playbook - January edition: Getting started with content creation

                                    Social media isn’t just about posting some random content. It’s about why certain content works, how brands stand out, and what makes people pause mid-scroll. The Social Playbook is a monthly community series where we break all of that down. Through real
                                  • Import Error: Empty values for mandatory fields - Closing Date

                                    Hello, I've tried multiple times to import a CVS Potential list from another Zoho account. But the error message I get is: Empty values for mandatory fields - Closing Date There are valid dates in this field, so I don't understand why this error messages
                                  • 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,
                                  • Special characters (like â, â, æ) breaking when input in a field (encoding issue)

                                    Hey everyone, We are currently dealing with a probably encoding issue when we populate a field (mostly but not exclusively, 'Last Name' for Leads and Contracts). If the user manually inputs special characters (like ä, â, á etc.) from Scandinavian languages,
                                  • Customizable UI components in pages | Theme builder

                                    Anyone know when these roadmap items are scheduled for release? They were originally scheduled for Q4 2025. https://www.zoho.com/creator/product-roadmap.html
                                  • Feature Requests - Contact Coloured Picklist Visibility & Field Visibility During Ticket Creation

                                    Hi Desk Team, I have 2 feature requests for you. Since Coloured Picklists are now available in Desk, It would be great if the colours were visible on the Related Details (Contact Information) when creating a ticket. In the screenshot below, I have 2 fields
                                  • How to integrate XML with Zoho CRM

                                    Hi, I have an eCom service provider that gives me a dynamic XML that contains order information, clients, shipments... The XML link is the only thing I have. No Oath or key, No API get... I want to integrate it into Zoho CRM. I am not a developer nor
                                  • Feature Request - Ability to Customise Contact Info Card on Ticket Details View

                                    Hi Desk Team, I've added a "Contact Priority" and "Account Prioirty" field and it would be very useful to agents if they could see that information in the Contact Info card on the Ticket Details view. It would be great if we could choose some fields to
                                  • Tax in Quote

                                    Each row item in a quote has a tax value. At the total numbers at the bottom, there is also a Tax entry. If you select tax in both of the (line item, and the total), the tax doubles. My assumption is that the Tax total should be totalling the tax from
                                  • Zoho Flow integration with Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp

                                    Hi there,  any plans of adding integrations with Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp into Zoho Flow? Seems that more and more business are delivering automated updates such as "your order is received",  "your order has been shipped" and so on via these two platforms. Not sure if Whatsapp has the API access needed i am pretty sure that Facebook Messenger has... Kind regards Bo Thygesen 
                                  • Really want the field "Company" in the activities module!

                                    Hi team! Something we are really missing is able to see the field Company when working in the activities module. We have a lot of tasks and need to see what company it's related to. It's really annoying to not be able to see it.🙈 Thx!
                                  • Next Page