And Get More Value Out Of Your List

Email open rates are notoriously low.

And it really is no wonder, considering how much junk email we get on a daily basis.

Different market segments have different open rates. However, averaged over all industries, open rates are still below 20%.

That means 80% of the emails you send to your list are not getting opened, let alone read.

And if you’re working hard to grow your list, which I’m sure you are,  it can be discouraging to hit that Send button and see that all those email addresses that you worked so hard to collect – either organically or through paid advertising –  going to waste.

Average Email Open Rates and List Value

Whenever you hear about how you should expect to make ‘X’ dollars per month for each email address on your list, take that with a grain of salt. No two industries or lists are alike. What might be a good open rate for my list could be terribly low for yours.

But let’s assume you can make ‘X’ dollars per email subscriber. What if you could substantially increase the number of people who actually opened your emails.

Think about it. If you doubled your open rates, you basically have doubled the size of your list.

Let’s say you’ve got 10,000 subscribers on your list now.  What would your business look like if you could increase that to 20,000.

And It Gets Better

If you can increase your open rate, then your are actually ‘more’ than doubling the value of your list. I’ll tell you why that is in just a minute.

They say that the money is in the list. But we know that there is more to it than that. The value of your list is in the relationship you have with the poeple on it. A good indicator of that relationship is what your open and engagement rates are.

Way back in the day – I’m talking last century – my brother Stephen and I started building our list for Virtual Mechanics. Our company that would eventually sell SiteSpinner website design software.

Stephen set up his computer on his kitchen table. He was on a dial up modem, and that was where the phone jack was (remember those days? Maybe not…).

There were no email service providers like Mailchimp or Infusionsoft – those guys didn’t exist yet.

So when an email address came in, it would have to be downloaded onto the desktop computer. And when we sent a newsletter to our list, it would take hours to send.

The computer would be set to send through the night. Dinner was often not eaten at the kitchen table in those days. Half of the time we’d wake up the next morning and the computer would have crashed because our list was so large.

We had no idea who received our newsletters, let alone who actually opened them.

Now it’s easy. Click a button and your emails are sent out instantly. And you can see right away how many people are opening them and interacting with them.

How To Get Higher Open Rates

We’ll you could claim, like some people in the industry do, to get open rates of 60% or more. They probably have three people on their list, their business partner, their spouse, and their mom. Guess who is the one person opening their email.

If you want to increase your open rate, and effectively more than double the value of your list, it’s really not rocket science, and you can absolutely do it.

I’ve broken it down into two areas.

• Delivery – day, time, and delivery destination
• Content – subject line, email content, and frequency

Delivery

Day

What’s the best day to send to your list? Well, like many things in life, that depends. And I am not trying to fudge an answer.

But really, I can’t tell you that because it comes down to your industry. For example, Saturday night might not be a good time to send your newsletter if you’re in the business of promoting corporate database software.

However,  if you’re in the dating business, then just a guess, but I would think Saturday night might be a good time to send that email about how to get a date.

It really comes down to your business, and when your audience is most likely to engage with your message.

For blog post notifications: Sunday, or early in the week are good days.

B2B: Go with a weekday, preferably earlier in the week.

Time

The best time of day to send to your list also depends on the day you send it, your industry, and your audience.

Here’s the easiest solution. Many of the email service providers have a function that will allow you to send based on the time that people on your list are most likely to open them  – and they get that info by looking at historical data from your list. Which is really cool. So, if you have a list of any size, use that.

But let’s say you have a small list to start, or if your ESP doesn’t have a ‘best time to send’ function. If that’s the case, then go with 10:30 AM EST.

Why? Because that was what we found worked best for us over the years – after people have read their morning emails, and before lunch. And if your email service provider allows you to stagger your emails based on time zone, even better.

Folder

If your email is ending up in your subscriber’s Junk folder, then there’s pretty good chance it is not getting read.

So how do you keep it out of the junk mail folder you ask. Well, there are a couple of things that you can do that will help, and there’s one thing you can do that will ensure this does not happen.

First, make sure that you have a default ‘from’ email address set – you do that in your email service provider. Second, avoid using words that flag spam algorithms, like ‘free’ written all in caps. That type of thing.

But really the best way to ensure that your emails are not ending up in the wrong folder is to ask your readers, when they sign up to your list, to whitelist them. And then show them how to do it. The added benefit of this is that it trains email  clients on ‘other’ people’s systems to whitelist your emails too.

And if you want to see how I do that, click here to sign up to my list now if you are not already on it, and I”ll walk you through how to do that. Feel free to copy process.

Content

Subject Line

So now we’re getting into the meat (or the the soya grits if you prefer), which is the content of your emails.

Subject lines give everyone anxiety. And rightfully so. This one sentence goes a long way to determine if your email is going to get opened.

The thing is, too many people try to get tricky or smart, and it generally backfires.

Now I know there is a lot riding on the subject line, but if you clearly say what the value of the email is: ‘How I did this’ / ‘How you can do this’ / ‘What I Learned’ / ‘What you can learn’ etc. Those are good starting points.

Again, with many Email Service Providers, you can do A/B testing. That means you send the same email, but with two different subject lines. Some emails with subject line A are sent to one segment, others with subject line B are sent to another another segment.

Whichever email gets the most opens is the winner, and the remainder of the list gets that subject line.

Note though, that for this to work you have to have a substantial size list.

Story

The next component is Entertainment value, and this is where it gets fun.

What do people want? They want to be entertained, and they want to be informed.

We are a species that communicates through story.

How did I get a date? I saw a wooly mammoth, I killed a wooly mammoth, I took the meat home and roasted it on a fire outside my cave. I cleaned off in the lavender bushes. Now I’ve got 2o kids. Go figure…

Tell a story in your emails, preferably one that your reader can relate to. 

The cardinal sins are to be avoided in email content are:

1. being disingenuous
2. being inauthentic
3. being boring

Win people’s imaginations, and you will win their trust.

Value

And just as important as story is value.

You’ll often hear the phrase ‘secret sauce’ bandied about.  

‘This is the Secret Sauce I use to fill up my webinars,’ ‘this is the Secret Sauce I use to getting more consulting clients’…

Well if there is a secret sauce to getting a higher open email open rates, it comes from providing value to your list.

Stories set the scene for you to be able to provide value, preferably a solution to your reader’s problem.

• This is where the wooly mammoths roam
• This is how I killed one
• This is how a cooked it
• This is where the lavender bush is

Think about the emails you get. Chances are that the ones with the most value are the ones you are most likely to read.

Give the best, never hold back, and you’ll get the best in return.

Frequency

OK. so now you know. You want to entertain and inform. How often should you send to your list?

Out of site equals out of mind. If you are not messaging your list on a regular basis, you are loosing it. And this is one of the big ones that I see my colleges falling into.

You probably know the drill. You sign up for a someone’s list, you get a few emails, and then nothing. Then all of a sudden you get a flurry of messages, usually about their best friend who has just released a great product that you absolutely must buy.

If you’re like me and I’m sure you are, you don’t find that to be very authentic.

The winners are those who mesege their list regularly. And by regularly I mean at least once a week.

Conclusion

There you have it. But I’ll add one more thought.

If you send an email to a friend, would you expect it to be opened? You would. And why is that? Because it came from a friend – someone you know and trust.

And that’s what you want to think about when you are writing and sending your emails. Treat your audience like a trusted friend, and they’ll do the same in kind.

If you’re looking to grow your list, I’ve put together a cheat sheet on the three things to get you started. Click here now to get the List Builder’s Cheat Sheet.

 

J. Peter White