‘Tis the season . . . for high competition, coupled with low open rates. When adding in sweeping changes from iOS18 and shoppers who are slightly more optimistic on spending this year, and it looks like Q4 will be full of opportunities for email marketers. 

Of course, the holidays also serve as the busiest time in inboxes, making competition higher and open rates lower. To combat this increased competition, here are 3 tips to improve email open rates . . . for Black Friday emails, Cyber Monday emails, and all your holiday email marketing campaigns!

Tip #1: Improve Email Open Rates by Giving Subject Lines a Seasonal Spin!

• What To Do: Add a seasonal flair to your holiday email marketing efforts! In our email subject line generator, select “Yep!” in the Seasonal copy filter.
• Why This Helps: Nearly 68% of shoppers pay increased attention to holiday emails or seasonal emails from companies, especially during the holiday season.
• Where to Learn More: Check out our guide “Holiday Email Marketing: How to Generate the Best Email Subjects for Any Season” to learn more!

Tip #2: Improve Email Open Rates by Optimizing Subject Lines for Different Device Types

• What To Do: Backstroke’s email subject line generator has Audience filters. Here, you can select between whom you’re sending to—iPhone users, Android users or both.
• Why This Helps: 85% of smartphone users check email on their phones. And as iPhone and Android people have VERY different creative preferences, custom content helps email marketers connect with them more effectively. This will be especially helpful as iOS18 has massively changed the Apple email experience, affecting nearly 60% of U.S. smartphones. 
• Where to Learn More: Check out our Ultimate iOS 18 Guide to get answers on how to handle its updates. 

Tip #3: Improve Email Open Rates by Segmenting Your Audience and Speaking Their Slanguage!

• What To Do: Customize effective email subject lines for your specific audiences! Choose between genders, ages, locations, income levels, and more in Backstroke’s Audience filter. Then, you can add if you’d like to include slang and emojis to make your copy more appealing. 
• Why This Helps: Email segmentation drives 30% more opens and 50% more clicks.
• Where to Learn More: Check out our guide on how to segment whom you’re sending to in “Email Segmentation Strategy: 5 Ways to Segment Audiences & Create Custom AI Messages.”

Try it all NOW in the lite version of Backstroke’s email subject line generator!