I guess I should do what every good email marketer does…
And spend hours and hours poring over metrics for my email list. Right?
🤣
Not a chance!
I’ve got far better things to do with my time.
But I was curious enough to take a quick glance at my open rates from the last couple of months.
I’ll get to those in a bit.
For now: Let’s talk email open rates.
In case you’re not aware… they’re pretty unreliable nowadays.
There’s two main culprits for this.
First. Images are often turned off. Or tracking is blocked in emails for “security reasons”.
This means the “magic” invisible image in emails doesn’t work.
The point of this image is to allow emails to phone home and say they’ve been opened.
Second. There’s the opposite problem…
Especially since the infamous iOS 15 update on Apple devices.
iOS 15 does it’s own poking around in emails before you’ve even opened them yourself.
But doing that triggers an “open”.
I see these sort of phantom email opens “live” when I watch what happens straight after I hit “send”…
Within 5 minutes… 20% of my list have “opened” my email.
Never mind it being the early hours of the morning where most of you live.
And I don’t think that many of you are insomniacs… just waiting to open and devour my email the moment it arrives!
Because of these annoyances…
The open rate for one email in isolation tells you just about… NOTHING.
But before we go ejecting open rate metrics from our marketing toolkit…
It still has one helpful use. You see…
You can study email open patterns over time.
For example:
If there’s a sudden massive drop in opens… it can signal that something’s up and probably worth investigating.
In my case…
I can see in BerserkerMail what typical open rates have been for the past few months.
So I can spot if there’s been higher opens for one particular email.
Then I can wonder what made the difference. 🤔
Well… it’s not too much thinking. Because…
It’s reasonable to attribute most of the higher open rates to the subject line.
Simply because it’s the main thing that people see before deciding to open the email.
(The email preview — shown in email clients like Gmail — can sometimes contribute as well).
Now…
Let’s have a look at my emails with out-of-the-ordinary open rates.
There were 4 subject lines that pushed my opens to 60% or beyond.
(A rate I’m more than happy with. Usually they’re in the high 40s and 50s.)
Drum roll please… 🥁
60.0% — “The writing on my cup isn’t suitable for an email subject line”
60.5% — “Social media shifting sands”
61.0% — “Don’t stop believin’”
And top scoring:
63.6% — “Ask Every Prospect This”
What does this tell me?
Well.. it tells me I’m not putting people off with my subject lines 😅
And to be honest…
(Don’t tell anyone… 🤫)
I don’t actually put that much time into them!
😱
“B-b-but aren’t you supposed to be an email copywriter, Chris?”
Well, yes…
But daily email subject lines are an animal unto themselves.
And can be treated quite differently to other email or advertising subject lines and headings. (Definitely a topic for another day.)
I was particularly intrigued with the top scoring one…
Because it gives me the distinct impression that you lot like practical tips.
And/or it probably had something to do with the topic.
This particular subject line gets straight to the point about the tip inside.
Although I do share plenty of practical tips in other emails… it may not always be so obvious in the subject lines.
Easy solution for you… so you don’t miss out on any delectable tips:
Read all my emails! 😁
If a different subject line to these ones stood out to you in particular… drop me a reply and let me know.
Have a fantastic weekend!!
P.S. For the stats geeks amongst us… I’m certainly not one… but I do know enough to have a big enough sample size. So comparisons of percentages like this are at least somewhat reasonable 🤓
Ready to build your email list? Go here…
EmailForTheWin.com
Chris Milham