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
With email marketing, it’s all about monitoring your success and adjusting as necessary. Gmail’s new layout may take some time to adjust initially, but as long as you continue to deliver valuable, relevant content, customers and subscribers will look forward to your emails–and even search through tabs to find them!
Ahhh. There’s definitely a misunderstanding :)
This isn’t some product/service that I have just tried. This is my forum. It is my product. I developed it myself to give support to people directly. I cannot review objectively in the way you suggest; that’s for others to do :)
To avoid misunderstanding: I didn’t mention that because I know how to do it better :)
All in all, selling is an art, as stated earlier. It has to do a lot with trust. And trust comes from many different aspects. I think a more fruitful way might have been an article about this forum, how it has helped you personally with something related to what you do and why you think this can help us as well. This way it’s more of a ‘I have tested and approved it and would never sell it to you if I didn’t like it’ way of selling. If you understand what I mean. Pat Flynn for example does that well, e.g. back then with his Market Samurai video.
Best regards,
David
Yeah David. That’s definitely part of the game. You need to entice people with an offer and then hope that they want to continue receiving your emails. As I noted, opt-outs are fine. I consider it as a way of self-cleaning the list.
Admittedly, I am not always the best salesman. I prefer to just be upfront about the things I sell etc. The email was about buying a membership to my forum. Perhaps I should have teased readers about it once or twice and then launched them it; however the direct approach feels better to me. Here’s my product, buy it if you want.
How do you market new products to email subscribers? I’d be interested in hearing the techniques you use.
kevin
Hi Kevin,
I didn’t really care to go through it because I felt that the reason is to push something out to be sold (or bought by me, looking at it from the side of the recipient). I have no idea what this Rise Forum is but the style of the email indicated “buy!”, at least to me. So I disregarded it. Not that I am in general opposed to buying great stuff but then there needs to be a really catchy title that creates my interest. There are so many aspects that go into that, it’s impossible to go into detail or even try to find an explanation. Selling is an art, in some way. But I have to admit that I still didn’t look further now into Rise Forums to see if indeed you wanted to sell me/us something or if that is something one can join for free.
Regarding the opt-outs: niot sure if you offer a ‘freebie’ for signing in (I think so). So chances are high that people who signed out only signed in for the freebie, as you surely know anyway. Wouldn’t worry too much about that, it’s part of the ‘game’ :)
Best regards from Greece,
David
Thanks for the kind words. I have written guides in a more serious tone, though I prefer to write in a more relaxed manner :)
Nice explanation into the newsletter email process, your analysis of the outcome, and your theories on it’s lack of success. In regards to the 1 “complaint” you got, I would take 2 guesses: either 1) the person didn’t realize that it may ding you or 2) it was a competitor who signed up and then purposefully complained. Not everyone plays fair.
In any event, good luck with the next one. I enjoy your emails and I open and read every one. You’re a good writer and your posts read like a casual conversation.
You are 100% correct. I should have did a preview post about it first and explained my plans. Ideally, I wanted to launch with the affiliate program ready, but that will not be ready for at least another few days. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your honesty and transparency on this.
I did open the email and click on the link! I know you have mentioned the forums before on the blog, at least once any way, but when I read the email I wasn’t entirely sure it was for your forum or someone elses or what.
Maybe if you’d done a preview blog post before sending out the email, the list would’ve been more prepared for it perhaps…
Cheers,
Joe
Thanks Susan. Sending first thing on a Monday morning was a bad idea. I believe the weekend would give poor results as well. It is trial and error in this regard.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for sharing your email results with us. I always wondered if sending out an email on the weekends was worth it.
I am still working on improving my open rates, mine tend to be not so good.
Your tips definitely helped m look at what I could do better to improve my email marketing. Thanks for sharing and I hope you have a great day.