How a Behavior-based Email Campaign Led to an 88.7% Open Rate

By: Julia Brolin and Kayla Proell

Email marketing is all about mastering the art of trial and error. It’s about analyzing your buyer personas, learning from their behavior, and refining your message according to what works.

We recently achieved an 88.7% open rate on an email we deployed for a client. It’s the highest open rate on any email campaign we’ve ever deployed. We checked the results a number of times to make sure that the data was correct, and to say we were shocked would be an understatement.

So how did we make it happen?

The A/B Test

You can truly run A/B tests on anything. Traditionally, we do A/B tests to see what subject line gets a higher open rate, but we’ve also used them to experiment with a variety of CTAs by varying the language, placement, font, and color—all with the goal of improving click rates within emails.

Pro tip: Don’t change too many elements at once! You won’t be able to accurately discern which change contributed to the increased results. Be comfortable with iteration and testing to get better results every time.

In this case, we decided to run an A/B test between a designed email and a text-only email. This came after Hubspot recently released new data proving that nothing boosts opens and clicks as well as an old-school, plain-text email.  

When running the A/B test, the results of the text-only send were clearly better than the designed version. We deployed the actual email just 24 hours after the test, and got these amazing results:

• Opens: 88.7%
• Clicks: 88.7%

Yes! Everyone who opened the email also clicked!

Why Plain Text?

There are a few reasons why plain-text emails tend to perform better than their designed HTML counterparts, especially in the education industry. Here is what we’ve learned after years of working in edtech:

• Filters: Email providers divert commercial emails from users' main inboxes. For example, we once sent an email to an entire district and discovered a 100% deliverability rate with a 0% open rate because filters were blocking the message from coming through.
• Email server limitations: For example, Gmail will not automatically show images from unknown senders, so removing images gives you a better chance at a higher open rate.
• User preference for digestible formatting: Plain-text might be perceived as less of a time commitment to read, or perhaps people really don't care for design in email.

Our Biggest Takeaways

• Cut the fluff. In the education industry, teachers, principals, and administrators don’t care about a “pretty” design—they simply don’t have time for it. They want to read the email, then act or move on.
• Highlight a clear CTA. Because plain text removes the HTML design, the desired action becomes very clear. In other words, the link is the only text that shows up differently, so it naturally stands out.
• Listen to your results. It pays to test, and it really pays to actually act on the results. By sending out the test and acting right away, we saw much better results than we could have imagined.

So, next time you want to amp up the effectiveness of your email, try testing a plain-text email. Use what you learned to update your buyer personas, and forge ahead to the next send!

Thanks for sharing!