Justin,

Great article.

Since 2001 I have pretty much emailed my list once a week 3 weeks a month then a promo email followed by a few follow-up emails all in one week during the final week of the month.

That has made me some serious cash.

But lately I have been told daily email is the way to go. Put up a small post on your blog, email your list and tell them to read it.

My open rate is much higher than 13.6% and always has been, but can you give us a comparison of open rates for lists mailed 5+ times a week versus 1 or 2? iEntry.com does daily email and I according to their GM (who I had lunch with last year), their readership has daily net growth.

Curious what you can tell us Justin.

I’m amazed that she’s achieving this 46.8% open rate. It can probably be attributed to a few things…

1) Her RELATIONSHIP with her subscribers

2) The scarcity of her email messages. She probably doesn’t email them all the time, and leaves them hanging to her every word because they don’t hardly hear from her.

3) I definitely believe her CTR rate, because at times I experience similar results. It’s all in the way you DIRECT your reader to the link. If you demonstrate a NEED to click the link for something that’s beneficial or inspiring, they’ll click. If there’s no reason to click, THEY WON’T. Point blank.

Good article, Justin…and kudos to Diana.

Hi,
I think that email with some expected value in it will have better open rate. And statistic will tell us what we want to hear. Open rate in percentage. ok but from which volume of emails?? Maybe that 12% is much more emails than some 14%?? I think, open rate statistic is important for accidental emails (spam, which we are not doing, are we?), and for those who bombard their poor subscribers with a ton of emails. I mean we all open our bank statements (and similar emails) with 99% open rate. Am I right? So, value of the emeil…..

Not too concerned about open rates on any given day, more concerned about persistence and consistency in sending out auto responders. I find that 2 or 3 auto responders per week, keeps my name in front of my prospects.

I often have prospects call me up several months later, and say, Ray you must be real, been getting all those emails, from you for the past seveal months, so sign me up, I’m in!!!

It is really that simple, with A-Weber auto responders and email campaigns.

@Mark,

Open rate for my weekly newsletter (started in 2001) was over 45% *for first year subscribers*. Click thru rate was consistently over 75% of opens.

Since most of the time my promo emails were text, I don’t have open rate data. However with a multi-send, one week promotion I tended to see visits in the 90% range of number sent. Otherwise, on multiple text emails I sent promoting a product or service the number of visits correlated to about 90% of the number of individuals sent the emails.

@Justin,

I was thinking of open rate, though as you imply simply looking at open rate may give a false perspective–correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation and open rate doesn’t mean profitability. Still it would be interesting to see large scale open rate data broken down by frequency.

I’ll send you a private email about being a guinea pig.

@Dr. Brown,

Have you tested Fri v. Sat v. Sun? Just curious.

13% seems really low considering the double opt-in hassle for subscribers. I’d think they would be really interested in receiving what they asked for.

When we brought our list to aweber we had 27000 folks registered and that number dropped to about 3000.

Our open rate is between 70 and 75%.

It was a splash of cold water to see the initial numbers - especially as the guy who persuaded the boss to move to aweber in the first place - but real numbers are better than fantasy numbers.

I think open rate is over-rated.

If it’s a promotional email you should also look at $earned / emails sent.

Justin,

Thanks for the great info. I was just wondering last night what a typical open rate was.

I am happy to report I am achieving a 60%+ open rate. And I was frustrated it wasnt higher -lol.

And Aaron - thanks for referring me to aweber.

[…] bron: Email Newsletter Open Rates: April 2008 […]

This post really is reassuring! I was thinking along the same lines as Sean. My lowest open rate was 60.8% with a highest being 82.3. Avg would say about 77%. Click throughs have been about 10-33% for me.

I don’t send too often, and when I do, about 95% of the content is just useful helpful information to fellow guitar players and musicians. Usually I will tie in the information at the very end to something that I am promoting with a brief call to action.

It really does come down to your relationships with your subscribers, the type of site or product you are promoting, and having a compelling headline that really makes the reader want to learn more. Emphasizing their benefits or sparking their interest in the headline is a must.

My lowest open rate mailer had a headline "Please help GuitarPlayerZen.com with this Survey"

No wonder.

Hi!

Interesting facts.

However, I am an Artist and not a statistician, but those open rates for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. might not be different in a statistically significant matter anyway.

I personally open every single newsletters from folks I "like" regardless when they have sent it. Even, if the subject line sucks.

[…] their article , Aweber shows these open rate statistics for April […]

UGC!

@Stephen,

When I quoted the open rate above I specified "first year subscribers." Typically this was around 10,000 sent.

What I found with "aged" subscribers is that the open rate seems to stabilize after the first 12 months–dropping to 10%-15% for subscribers 13-48 months. But here’s the good part: Aged subscribers who open the email almost always click-thru to the site, making "aged" subscribers much more profitable per open than new subscribers.

Justin,

Great article.

And a question. If I send an html email whose content is smaller than the preview pane in lets say Outlook the recipient may not choose to so call open the email, because they’ve seen the content so to speak.

So my question is this, if an email only shows in a preview screen and is not double-clicked on (fully opened), would that be tracked as opened or not with Aweber’s system.

And if there is a web url hyperlink that they click on in the preview screen (again not in the fully opened email), does that change how Aweber tracks the html email open rate?

These numbers were very interesting to me… I just started our list almost eight weeks ago, and am sad that it is only up to 80 subscribers so far.
But it turns out we are getting very high opens at 74.53%. But since they are all new subscribers, the fact that the rate is so high is explained partly by the fact that they are all new subscribers, although many are long-time customers.
Our click through rate is 34.7% which I see is also pretty high! Cool. The same reasons as above partly apply.. plus this… I have only sent six messages in those eight weeks.. and each time I have sent the mail, it was due to an important sale or variety we were offering at that time. Since we are an agricultural operation with definite swings in production due to weather, I started the mailing list so I can encourage our customers to take advantage of the flushes of growth by offering various grades and prices while the plant growth is strong. My mail subject line will state the reason for the mailing (i.e.: heavy production this week with attendant lower prices… or some info as to the next weeks production). I expect to use it also to caution customers when the plants will go into a ‘dormant’ or slowdown phase, so they know to stock up now while we have plenty available. This should keep people buying when we have high availability, yet allow the plants their needed dormancies as our customers will have stocked up.

I look at the list as a way to acquaint our customers with the needs of the plants, so that they may take advantage of the plants growth cycle when production is high, and also warn them of upcoming slow-downs in production so that they will not be shocked and upset when I must remove some produce offline from sale, or raise the price due to low availability. In essence, my mails are designed to keep potential customers aware of the needs of the plants, so that they can more effectively keep themselves supplied with cactus.

Perhaps another reason for high opens is the fact that I have only mailed six lists in eight weeks, and each time I have mailed it was a ’sweet and short’ message giving some special price or advice as to ordering with an eye to convincing customers now was a good time to visit the site to consider whether they wish to order now.

While our open rate seems to be high, our click-through rate at 34.7% does not seem so far above the average as the open ratio is.. this is explained by the fact that my mails are succinct (unlike this message) and give an explanation of the purpose of that particular mail. Since our message is not pertinent to all users at that time (some will not want the particular cactus featured), subscribers who do not want that cactus will not click through.. perhaps in several weeks time, I might offer a special due to high availability and growth of the plants they do like, this is the mail they will click on and follow through, while perhaps the person who clicked though weeks before will not due to it not being his ‘cup of cactus’.

Thanks for making this service available, I expect it will increase our customer awareness of our unique agricultural challenges, and help us keep our customers happy with our produce and practices.

I do wish I had been engaging in a mailing list for several years, I would have many more subscribers, and the past delays in production due to weather and deer or insect damage would be easier to explain to people.

[…] you haven’t already seen this, check it […]

Hi. Just wanted to share my 2 cents on my open rate.

It all begins with the relationship you are building with your subscribers.

If they like, trust and know you, AND like the messages you are sending (quality, not quantity), then they will wait for your newsletter.

I also noticed that the biggest open rates happen when I start the message with their name. But i only do this when i am going to send out a promotion or anything else besides my newsletter.

I recently sold out a teleseminar (in spanish) and asked my clients, who purchased for the FIRST time, to tell me the reasons they bought.

(This is great feedback that proves that building a relationship with your list is the key to good open rates, great CTR and greeeaaat $$).

REASONS WHY READERS BOUGHT:

1. Consistency - Train your readers to expect you. Be there exactly the same hour at the same day of the week that you choose. This builds expectation and trust with your readers.

2. Connection - Build a connection with your readers. Be human! Share personal things about your life. I get the most CTR’s when i share something about my life. Don’t be afraid to be human. People buy from people, not from companies.

3. Show, don’t tell - Whatever market you are reaching, the sure way to position yourself as an expert is to prove that you are one. I write a lot about SEO but prove to my readers that I am strongly positioned in Google (87% of my traffic comes through search engines).

Well… There you have it! Just my thoughs from the beautiful island of Puerto Rico.

I hope the spammers don’t hear about this. I live in the UK and receive huge amounts of spam over the weekend. Getting it all on Thursday would be just too much. Thanks for the great info.

John (where do I put a picture!)

how do you track open rates? (sorry for the dumb question)