For HR professionals, a marketing channel that gives a 4,300% ROI (according to the Direct Marketing Association) is really not something to joke with, especially in this current economic dispensation. It’s therefore in your own interest to find creative – but ethical – ways to make this channel work harder for you.

After deliverability, open rates are the next most important aspects of email marketing. After all, if nobody opens your email, your content and promos won’t get seen.

If you need more ways to boost your email open rates, here are 5 sneaky (but ethical) ones:

1. Add a Question Mark

“When you add a question mark to the end of any statement it forces the brain to read the statement as though it were a question.” – Unbounce.

The human mind is naturally wired to answer questions, and this makes question subject lines mentally engaging – naturally. Ads that are engaging get higher response rates. So if you want your email to have a higher open rate, simply add a question mark.

The subject line doesn’t even necessarily have to be a question to use a question mark. You can write a normal statement and still add a question mark… like this: “5 Signs You Need a Foundation Repair?”

2. Use Symbols

Using symbols in your subject line makes your email standout from others in your receiver’s inbox, and it’s a great way to get attention to your email. This has been proven to boost open rates.

It could be simple arrow symbols like “>>” or “→”, or emojis/smileys, and it could be the more techy and more unique “Unicode symbols” (also known as “glyphs”).

You can use this glyph search tool to about any symbol (snowman, play button, dollar sign, anything!) you need for your subject line.

One rule of thumb however is that you do not want to overuse symbols in your email marketing, so that your audience doesn’t get used to them and stop responding to them with time.

3. Personalize with First Name

Talking to your recipient with his/her first name in the subject line is another proven way to boost open rates. For example…

“What are you doing tomorrow?” will definitely not get as much open rate as: “Sarah, what are you doing tomorrow?”…as long as you don’t overuse this too.

4. Avoid Early Mornings

You want to make sure your email isn’t the first thing your recipients see in the morning. Most people – especially business people – tend to go through their email first thing in the morning on their phones…not to read, but to start deleting and eventually clean out their inbox before they get to the office. You don’t want your emails to fall victim of this early morning purge, so reserve your emails till the afternoons and evenings.

5. Do a List Purge

It might sound counterintuitive (and definitely not sneaky) but cleaning out your list is actually a great way to increase your open rates. I mean; going through your list and deleting emails of people that don’t open your emails at all (or again).

One thing you must note is that the percentage of people that open your emails (yes, your open rate) affects your deliverability. That is, it affects how much your email gets into people’s inboxes. And when people don’t get your emails at all, your open rates automatically fall further.

Yes, it’s really messy. But you get my point: clean out your email list and remove people that don’t open or engage with your emails.

Remember, email marketing is that marketing channel that returns $44.25 for every $1 spent. If you only need to get one form of marketing right, email should be the one. And if you need to get just one part of email marketing right, then it better be having a great open rate – or better, increasing open rates…because once you have this, your business practically becomes unstoppable!

What other tricks do you use to increase your email open rates? Share your tips in the comments…see you there!