Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter will know that I sent an email out yesterday about my new project Rise Forums. Do not worry if you are not currently a subscriber as I later decided to publish the newsletter as a post.
There are a huge number of blogging and marketing blogs out there. When it comes to email marketing and affiliate marketing, there is unfortunately not a lot of transparency about how things get done. I believe readers would get more from the blogs they read if the authors explained more about how they made money online (rather than just posing with cheques). So I thought it would be interesting to show you a snapshot of the email I sent yesterday to subscribers. This is not a complete walkthrough on how to use an email marketing service; it is simply a snapshot of the email I sent to subscribers yesterday. From the title of this post, you already know that the email blast was not successful. Let us look closer at why that is the case.
The email was sent to promote my new private discussion forum Rise Forums. My hope was that it would be well received by newsletter subscribers, however the number of click throughs was very disappointing; which is why I decided to publish the announcement as a post as well.
I have used many email marketing services in the past including Aweber, MailChimp and FeedBlitz. I am currently GetResponse and I am fairly happy with. It does have some bugs and there are some things I wish they would improve; however this could be said about all email marketing services.
My open rate for yesterday’s email was terrible. I normally get an open rate of around 24%. This has sometimes dropped down to around 20%, though to drop to just under 12% was a shock; particularly as this email blast was so important.
I need to take some of the blame for this. Firstly, the subject title of was not inviting enough. I could have done a lot better than “Connect With Me Today Through Rise Forums”. Secondly, I scheduled the email to go out at Monday at 7am. This was another mistake. Most people take the weekend off to relax and spend time with family and friends. Therefore, when they check their inbox in a Monday morning, they have a few days worth of emails to catch up on. This causes a larger percentage of emails to get deleted and sent right to the spam folder.
Out of the 1,884 sent emails, a whopping 1,700 subscribers did not even open the email to read it. This is not uncommon for email marketers, however as my normal open rate is more than twice as high, I was of course disappointed. Another large disappointment was the click rate. A quick check of my previous emails shows that I normally receive a click rate of between 5% and 10%. This email blast had a click rate of 1.17%.
A slightly lower click rate is to be expected. All of my previous products were books and were initially offered to subscribers free, therefore this was the first time that I emailed my subscribers about actually spending money. Email marketers know that there is a big difference having a list of buyers and a list of non-buyers. From a selling point of view, subscribers who never buy are (mostly) worthless. From a blogger’s point of view, I strongly believe that there is still value in having readers that are not willing or ready to click the buy button. Even a reader simply takes the time to leave a comment on one of my posts. That, to me, is valuable.
It is true that the power is in the list. Being able to contact people directly through email is a powerful tool. In order for me to drive more traffic to products and services I launch, it is clear that I need to increase the number of subscribers. 22 clicks from over 1,900 newsletter subscribers just does not cut it.
The email also caused six people to unsubscribe. This is nothing to be upset about. An unsubscribe rate of 0.32% is very low. Also, I do not believe that people unsubscribing is a bad thing. I do not want to email anyone that does not want to receive my emails. Why would I: They are not interested in anything I do. As someone that subscribes to newsletters too, I realise that people’s reading habits and their own situation changes. So seeing people unsubscribe after an email blast should not alarm you unless the rate is ridiculously high.
What does frustrate me is complaints. Everyone who subscribes to my email list has done so through their own choice. I did not add their name without their approval. They chose to receive emails from me and at the bottom of every email I send to them, there is a link for them to unsubscribe. So it is frustrating when someone chooses to complain instead and state that my email to them was not authorised. I do realise that this is part and parcel of email marketing; however it does annoy me profusely. Why do some people go out of their way to make a complaint about a newsletter they wanted to subscribe to?
It is obvious that I could have greatly increased my open rate by simply scheduling the email on a better day and time. That was a silly mistake on my part. I also believe that it is in my interests to clean my list in the future and remove those that have not opened my emails over the last few months. I’d love to show you all this in the future.
It is not all doom and gloom. I still have a loyal readership and I know that this was nothing but a small blip on my journey in developing this blog. Onwards and upwards people! :)
I hope you have enjoyed this brief look at yesterday’s email blast. If you have any questions regarding my email blast, please leave a comment.
Good luck,
Kevin