But open rate is one of the factors involved in the process of profiting from your list. If a mail never gets opened, there is no profit. Learning how to make each step of the process more effective ensures the highest profit per subscriber.

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

We can’t assume that because someone has commented on our blog or given an email address on any other form that they’ve given permission for email *unless we explicitly ask for that permission*.

In other words, if this form told you that you’d be subscribed to our blog newsletter, then yes, it would be permissible.

However, I don’t think it would be the best idea since it would dissuade many from commenting on this blog and likely cause a higher rate of unsubscribers, spam complaints, and lower opens on our blog newsletter list.

I would recommend putting a form on your site wherever it is relevant, but don’t overdo the offer and push the boundaries of permission to capture a few more subscribers - if anything this will only harm your campaign.

We used to send it out on a Saturday and that worked quite well too. In fact, weekend emails we found were actually read more in-depth as people obviously had more time.

Great stats though, thanks for sharing.

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.

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.

I agree that testing is the only way to know which day and which subjects work best for your subscribers. I’ve been surprised to see my open rate go up on or just before a holiday. I always thought that fewer people would be reading their email on those days.

My main newsletter goes out on Tues. but a few times I’ve sent announcements on a Sunday thinking that they’d be opened on Monday. Not so, the few Sundays I sent email, the rates were as good or better than my average.

The open rate for my e-courses averages 80%. Clearly, the folks wno sign up for follow-ups are more dedicated to getting the information than folks who sign up for newsletters.

As with everything else involving humans, there are no sure guidelines. We must each test to see what works for our subscribers. Then test and retest.