Five email marketing tactics to lift open and click-through rates

Executive overview

Most email lists quietly destroy deliverability: inbox providers penalise senders whose subscribers ignore them, dragging down open rates for engaged subscribers too. Five concrete steps — applied consistently over 100 days — can reverse this.

Scrubbing inactive subscribers and segmenting by behaviour are the two highest-leverage moves.

List hygiene and personalisation

• Remove subscribers who never open — inbox providers use inactivity as a spam signal affecting all recipients
• Personalisation in subject lines lifts open rates up to 74%
• Use lowercase, informal subject lines to mimic personal messages (e.g. "John, check this out")
• Never bait-and-switch: subject line must match the email content

Segmentation and testing

• Segment by behaviour: buyers vs non-buyers, cart abandoners vs completers
• Sending the same email to repeat buyers and first-time prospects wastes both
• 32% of marketers rank email segmentation as a top priority — it directly lifts revenue
• A/B test copy, design, and button variations; results vary by industry and list type

Automation

• Trigger-based emails reach open rates as high as 49%
• Post-purchase upsell or downsell sequences are the highest-impact trigger to implement first