Let’s talk about open rates.
(yay!)
“Email Players” Michael C. asks:
“Hey man— been doing daily emails for a client of mine in the weight loss space. They are killing it. This is generally his lowest selling month and now it will likely be the highest. The only issue is… he has major problems with the list. He has 16,000+ names yet the highest open rate he’s ever had is ~9%. My emails are selling very well to his list yet hardly anyone is opening them. It’s a shame because I know if we could just get more opens we’d both make a ton more money. Any ideas on how we can revitalize the list? Thanks man!”
As Mr. Owl would say, let’s find out:
Sales are up?
Higher than ever during the slowest month?
Kicking gluteus assimus?
Then who cares about the opens.
Especially since, Android phones mostly don’t even register them (if its email program html is turned off by default), and a big study was done a little while back showing the vast majority of emails are *opened* on phones (iPhones, at least) but the majority of transactions are done on the desktop.
There are legitimate reasons to track opens.
But, not as some kind of gauge for sales.
Not in my experience, at least. In fact, I have seen way too many tests where sales were lower with higher open rates, and higher with lower open rates.
If sales is the plum you’re after picking then here’s something else to ponder:
I am not a big fan of traditional goal-setting.
By that I mean, people saying they need to get a certain results (number of opens, sales, clicks, opt ins, whatever). You cannot control those things. And purusing them can often cause you to do needy things as a result. Need builds neediness, and people can smell neediness in a business trying to sell them like shyt on a shoe.
The solution?
Form your goals around what you *can* control:
Writing daily.
Testing and/or tweaking your offers.
Playing around with different traffic sources.
Being consistent.
Doing things to bond with your list more.
Writing better subject lines.
Testing different names in the “from” field (ala Tellman Knudson)
Constantly educating yourself on the fundamentals (principles).
And the list goes on.
Lots of people obsess over getting better open rates when they should be obsessed with writing better emails.
Speaking of which:
The January “Email Players” issue goes more into why most goal-setting where you set specific sales, numbers, etc is counterproductive. You won’t hear this at the w00-w00 unicorn fart social media posts or from the stage.
But, you will hear it in “Email Players”.
Come get your lovin’ here:
Ben Settle
