Low open rate - what can I do?

Sometimes we are disappointed by a very low open rate in an email campaign. Let's analyse what can be the causes of these statistics and how to solve them:
- Low quality database
The first step to successful email campaigns is to target the right people with up-to-date contact details. A mailing list with very old records often generates these problems as many email addresses are no longer used, some services stop working (e.g. Terra.es), and users sometimes don't even remember having given their consent to receive our emails. The use of low quality databases is one of the main reasons for poor results in some email campaigns.

        SOLUTION: Debug the database, obtain new records.
With respect to the base in question, actions can be taken in which we check the user's current interest and discard inactive users and bounced emails (soft and hardbounces). We will try to keep the records that show a potential interest in our products or services. At the same time, strategies to attract new registrations should be considered in order to expand and update the audience.
–          Frequency of dispatch
How often do we contact users? We must be careful with this factor, because if it is a high frequency we may be burning the database and users may get tired of us.

On the other hand, in cases where the frequency of deliveries has to be high due to the business model itself (e.g. in Daily Deal business models), it is important to measure the churn rate and its impact on the Lifetime Value in different possible scenarios (1 shipment per day, 2 shipments per day, 3 shipments per day...).
        SOLUTION: Analyse what the audience expects from us and establish a realistic periodicity in relation to the audience's interest and our pace of content generation.
- Spam filters
We may have overlooked the recommendations to minimise the effect of SPAM filters. Did we give too much prominence to the image? Did we use suspicious words in the subject line?
SOLUTION: To know the factors that take into account the spam filters and avoid them in the configuration of our messages.
- Reputation
Our reputation as a sender may have fallen for a variety of reasons. Accumulation of bad results in consecutive campaigns, bad practices .... All this can penalise our deliverability and even get us on mailing blacklists that are difficult to get off.
SOLUTION: Learn about email marketing best practices and issues affecting deliverability.. Don't leave your email marketing strategy in the wrong hands and adapt to the demands of your email customers. We give you some tips in this other post.
- Shared servers:
Often we do not have a server dedicated exclusively to our deliveries, but must share the server with other companies. This sometimes results in bad practices of other server users affecting our deliverability.
SOLUTIONIn these cases, the responsibility for debugging this failure lies with the sending platform, but if we observe an abnormally negative behaviour of our statistics, we must be vigilant to notify the platform to fix the problem.
- Unattractive subject matter
Lastly, there is an element that we sometimes do not pay enough attention and time to: the subject of the message. Numerous tests show the differences we can obtain in the statistics depending on the configuration of the subject line.
SOLUTION: Spend time on the choice of the issue y follow some guidelines that will help you reach the user. Even so, don't just go by other people's analysis, try to test your own database to see what works and what doesn't work.