The Open Rate is a very important KPI that you are using to measure how many subscribers open your emails.
You should be looking at, and constantly trying to improve your Open Rate. More Opens equal more chances to get your message and/or promotion across.
If you Google “How to improve the email open rate” you will see hundreds of articles all talk about the following: keep the list fresh, segment the list, avoid spam filters, improve sending times, improve your subject line, personalize your emails, optimize for mobile, design, design, design…
The guides you normally find online are overwhelmingly not very practical, to say the least.
📈 TL;DR: 3 Steps to Higher Email Open Rates
- Fix Your Technical Plumbing: Stop guessing why open rates are low. If your technical setup (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) isn't fully authenticated, you're bound to land directly in the spam folder regardless of how good your copywriting is.
- Prune the Dead Weight: Don't keep emailing dead accounts. Exclude subscribers who have been completely inactive for 12+ months from your bulk sends. Cleaning your list immediately raises your sender reputation, which boosts overall inbox placement and revenue.
- Prioritize Text-Heavy Layouts: Unless you have the massive domain authority of a giant like ASOS, highly graphic-heavy layouts trigger spam filters and load slowly. Simpler, text-focused designs reach the inbox reliably and feel like personalized human notes.
- Claim Your Custom Domain: Check your email headers. If they say your sender address is "via klaviyomail.com" instead of coming straight from your own domain, configure your sending domain instantly to establish true brand authority.
- Action: Set up a segment of subscribers who haven't opened an email in 12+ months. Exclude them from your next 3 bulk campaigns, track your open rates, and watch your deliverability metrics shift upward.
In this guide, I’m going to make it easy and tell you what you need to do today to improve your Email Marketing Open Rate.
1. Deliverability
Before you write a single subject line, you need to make sure you do not have any technical issues holding you back. If your emails are landing in the spam folder, your open rate will remain stagnant regardless of how good your copy is.
You must authenticate your sending domain. Check your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to make sure your brand is fully compliant with modern inbox standards, and ensure you are not on any industry blacklists. This is no longer optional. Major inbox providers like Google and Yahoo now strictly enforce these authentication protocols for bulk senders. If you fail to configure these correctly, your emails will be blocked entirely.
I’ve detailed this in the following article: 3 Easy Checks to Improve Email Deliverability (4-5 mins read)
2. List Management
How to clean up the list – follow these steps.
You must know how to clean up your list effectively. To do this, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and answer the following question honestly. If you were shopping on your own site, how often would you actually make a purchase?
If the realistic answer is within 3 to 12 months, then you should immediately exclude all subscribers who have been inactive for over 12 months.
Go ahead and create a segment right now inside Klaviyo with subscribers who have not opened any of your emails in the last 12 months. Do not unsubscribe them, just remove them from your bulk promotional sends and see what that does to your open rate for your following three emails. You will see direct revenue growth after the first three emails because more of your messages will reach primary inboxes instead of spam folders.
You must do this constantly and ideally automate the entire process. Reduce the number of generic bulk sends and aggressively utilize email marketing automation. For the last several years, our core consulting efforts have been focused precisely on this process. We move clients from traditional batch-and-blast bulk sends into highly targeted email automation, and every single time the results are outstanding.
Do this constantly and ideally automate the process.
Reduce the number of bulk sends & use email marketing automation.
For the last 2 years, all my consulting efforts have been to do just this – move clients from traditional bulk sends into email automation and every single time the results have been great. Email automation is generating more revenue than bulk sends in most of cases and bulk sends get better open, click-through, and conversion rates because they are no longer spammy. This is a bigger subject, it’s true, and that is why I’ve created step-by-step guides for both of the above and if you follow them, you could have an email automation program set up, within the next few days – you just need to commit to doing this.
3. Design
Make sure you have enough text
Often I see emails that are too image-heavy (or only composed out of images).
- But ASOS is sending image-heavy emails, so why shouldn’t I? ASOS has a great domain reputation – their emails will reach inboxes – yours won’t.
- image-heavy emails are big and load slowly or not at all if you are not a safe sender
- image-heavy emails are harder to build so that they look good on both desktop and mobile devices
- text-heavy emails will always load, and you will get the message across even if images have not loaded just yet
- text-heavy emails will have better deliverability and thus better open rates
Check your sender name
Your Sender Name should be your brand. Not Sales, not Customer Support, not John Black. You can personalize it a bit if you want but you still need to use the brand. i.e. John from Nike, instead of Nike.
Check your sending domain
Make sure your emails are actually coming from your own domain, not an unknown domain provided by your email service provider or hosting company. You can verify this by simply opening a previous email you sent and looking closely at the header details.
Does it say “via yourdomain.com” or does it say something messy like “via abc3.klaviyomail.com”? If it is the latter, you are bleeding domain reputation. Reach out to your email service provider, your hosting provider, or an agency partner like eCommerce Today to get a dedicated sending domain configured immediately.
By mastering your technical deliverability, aggressively managing your list hygiene, and optimizing your design for inbox providers, you will secure higher open rates and drastically improve your email marketing ROI.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is a good email open rate for an e-commerce business?
A strong email open rate for eCommerce typically ranges between 35% and 45%, depending on the specific industry and whether you are sending an automated flow or a bulk promotional campaign. Automated flows usually see much higher open rates than bulk sends.
2. How do SPF, DKIM, and DMARC improve email open rates?
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are technical authentication protocols that prove to inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo that you are the legitimate sender of an email. Proper configuration prevents your emails from being flagged as spam, which directly increases your open rates.
3. Why are my Shopify and Klaviyo emails going to the spam folder?
Emails often go to spam due to a poor sender reputation caused by a lack of domain authentication, sending too many emails to unengaged subscribers, or using email designs that are entirely image-based with no text.
4. How often should I clean my eCommerce email list?
You should clean your email list continuously by setting up automated sunset flows. Manually, you should create segments that exclude any subscriber who has not opened or clicked an email in the last 12 months to protect your deliverability.
5. Does the image-to-text ratio affect email deliverability?
Yes, sending emails composed entirely of images can trigger spam filters. Text-heavy emails load faster, are easier to read on mobile devices, and generally achieve better deliverability and open rates.
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