My biz partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard (former Navy nuke engineer-turned-world-class-email automation specialist & software developer) recently sent the following to his list about the folly of deleting people off your list because they haven’t opened an email in the past 30, 60, 90 days or whatever.<\/p>\n
This is something a lot of people wonder about.<\/p>\n
Certainly, we get lots of questions about this.<\/p>\n
And I can only assume someone is out there teaching to do this. And the tl;dr answer is is it’s not only majoring in the minors but is like cutting your business’ balls off.<\/p>\n
But here is a more detailed answer from Troy about why that is:<\/p>\n
There are numerous reasons why not emailing people that haven\u2019t opened an email in the past 30\/60\/90 days is not wise:<\/strong><\/p>\n
+ Most Android devices block email opens by default<\/strong><\/p>\n
+ Many email clients from popular ESPs also block email open tracking<\/strong><\/p>\n
+ Many others create \u201cfalse data\u201d by programmatically triggering false opens, throwing things even more askew<\/strong><\/p>\n
+ Email open rates will fluctuate quite a bit from month to month and provider to provider. As various ESPs roll out changes to their platforms, the open rate data gets all out of whack. This is a continual cycle that I can only call, in very technical terms, a \u201cbat sh*t crazy hot mess\u201d. Yes those are technical and official terms! But seriously, trying to correlate that is just a wee bit insane.<\/strong><\/p>\n
+ But the bigger reason is much more important. In fact, dare I say, quoting Metallica\u2019s hit song, \u201cNothing Else Matters\u201d!<\/strong><\/p>\n
The real reason is all about sales and income. Ben Settle and I have been preaching this for years. We both make sales every single week from people that don\u2019t \u201copen\u201d our emails (officially, at least).\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Recently, when I was running my 24 Books in 24 Days promotion, a sale came in from my friend and mentor Ken McCarthy. Just for sh*ts and giggles, I opened up his contact record in BerserkerMail\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n
That\u2019s when things got interesting\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n
Scrolling back through months and months, not a single email \u201copened\u201d officially. Yet, sales have come in\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n
This is why both Ben and I are NOT proponents of filtering people off your list based on open metrics \u2014 you\u2019ll simply be leaving money on the table.<\/strong><\/p>\n
There are, however, dead emails on your lists\u2026 and that\u2019s why at BerserkerMail we charge a setup fee and force an email list scrub to analyze them. It\u2019s amazing how much junk we uncover.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Look, email is an imperfect science to be sure. It always has been and it always will be. There are simply too many variables for it to be anything else.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Do what you will with that info.<\/p>\n
But this is one of many reasons why I don\u2019t blanket delete people or pay much attention to open rates at all and never have. I curate hard at the opt-in, use BerserkerMail\u2019s advanced blocking features to keep the bots & luke warm types off, and if I want to start jettisoning people I do a list scrub, not a list carpet bombing and throwing the proverbial babies out with the proverbial bathwater.<\/p>\n
All right enough.<\/p>\n
More on the paid Email Players newsletter here:<\/p>\n