Imagine this: You sent an email to your entire list to generate sales for an end-of-the-month push. Later you check your reports and see that your open rate were abysmal. What a blow! Not only did you fail to generate sales, a bunch of contacts unsubscribed from your list.

There are a few reasons why this may have happened, but here are the four most likely reasons along with advice for how you can fix it.

You send junk

Would you sending the stuff you send to your list to your friends and family? If not, think about a different way to touch base with your contacts and provide something of relevance. Not sure if you send junk? If your email message is “useful,” it’s resourceful and people want to save and archive it. If your message is “interesting” it’s funny, relevant and usually good for forwarding to their contacts. If your message is neither interesting or useful … it’s junk.

You use unoriginal, boring subject lines

People are tired of receiving the same emails with the same boring subject lines. They get it. Really, that’s why they don’t bother reading them. Be imaginative and creative and make people think when they read your subject line.

You are still emailing customers from 1998

Do you use the same email address for everything? Probably not. Chances are, you have a primary address for friends and family and a secondary address for commercial offers. Your contacts are the same way, and are probably using their secondary address with you.

Email permission tends to expire in about 10 months – so the more opportunities to confirm and re-confirm their interest (beyond an opt-out link), the better. To fix this, consider using an alternative follow-up campaign (phone/direct mail) to have people update their contact information and re-opt-in to your marketing. Disciplined email marketing pays off when you have a truly engaged, interested and hungry list – and you can really cater to the people who matter.

You send just like the rest of ‘em

We all get our nighttime to morning email flood. I admit, sometimes I just use my Delete key more liberally during those hours and my reply button during the daytime. To fix this, try mixing up and allowing people to choose if they want your message in the morning, in the evening or mid-day.

You emailed to your entire list

Not every subscriber is interested in everything you have to offer. Slice and dice your email list into relevant, targeted groups and send to those groups of users where the message is attractive, engaging and relevant.

Not everyone’s open rates will always improve. It’s fact. However, the more you pay close attention to the result of your emails and more importantly, your recipients’ expectations and satisfaction – the more your email open rates will rise with your fine-tuning.

To learn more about email marketing best practices, download a free report about Email Marketing 2.0.