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Asking the Right (Email) Questions It's interesting to talk to people who are new to email. They have a whole bunch of concerns that experienced email marketers never talk about. Well, at least they don't talk about them since about the year 2000 (7 years ago). If you're tangled up in one of these webs, make this article your excuse to break free and start worrying about something that really matters -- and that will really help enhance your email marketing efforts. Here we go... How Can We Find Out Our Absolute Open Rate? As I quizzed further I learned that although their open rate was in the 40% range, they felt is should be higher. When they quizzed their ESP about this, they learned that if an email client blocks images (like most PDAs and many of the newer email clients), an open won't be triggered when the email is read. This lead them to a quest to discover their "real" open rate -- and it lead them to think there might be something wrong with their current ESP. When we discussed it further, I learned that their open rates were running in the low 40%, which is above the industry average (it hovers around 30%). One reason for this above-average open was their very small list size -- open rates tend to decrease as your list grows. One more data point -- there's another, more favorable, lever tugging at everyone's open rates -- the preview pane. When someone scrolls past your email in a preview pane, it triggers an open, even if it's only "open" for a second and the reader doesn't look at it. So while suppressed images and blackberries are pulling all open rates down, preview pane scrolls are pulling all open rates up. When we spoke further, I learned that people universally tell them they read their emails "every day" -- which is why they couldn't imagine their open rate wasn't closer to 100%. But this isn't observed behavior -- it's reported behavior. People are forgetful; sometimes they even tell a little white lie to keep from hurting feelings. Bottom line: they were asking the wrong question. Open rates aren't meant to be, were never meant to be, absolute measures of how many people read you email. They are relative figures you can use to compare (a) present to past performance and (b) your email to industry benchmarks. There's an inherent assumption that a margin of error exists -- and that it's relatively the same for everyone (or at least everyone sending to a given target audience). Some preview panes opens don't mean anyone looked at it; some blackberry readers are overlooked because they don't trigger an open. But trying to figure out how this all comes out in the wash is pointless. If you're not happy with your reported open rate, there are a few things you can do to try to improve it:
If We Begin Asking for Email Addresses Offline, What
Percentage Will Provide Them? Why not? Because if you aren't already collecting email addresses at every customer and prospect touch point, you'll being silly. Email is so much less expensive -- and more timely -- than postal mail. Unless your audience is very old -- and I mean very old, since senior citizens are the fastest growing age group on the Internet and email is one of the first applications people use -- you're crazy not to be asking for an email address. Will you always get it? No. My in-laws, who I love, don't have a computer; forget about getting an email address from them. But they are the exception, not the rule. Any email addresses you can collect offline are valuable; and especially if you are collecting email addresses online (as this organization is), there's no reason not to be consistent across all channels. What Are the Odds of Being Blacklisted or Worst If I
Add Addresses to My List Without Getting an Opt-in? It's a slippery slope. I once had a sports Website (I'm a huge sports fan) share my email address with their network affiliate, who decided (I can only assume its because I'm a woman, I can't believe they share the men's email addresses) I'd like to get a daily soap opera digest (not!). Is that as bad as a spammer sending me emails offering to enhance a body part I don't even have? Probably not, but where does it stop? Anytime someone claims to know what someone else wants and refuses to ask them, I cringe. If they really want this email, why not just offer it to them and see what they say? Why start sending it and make them take action to get off the list? And we haven't even discussed where these non-opt-in lists come from. Let's say you are a legitimate email marketer. It's still easy to get messed up with folks selling email lists who aren't on the up and up. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, no matter who they say is on the list. It's a business risk -- one I'm not willing to take, as in addition to potentially harming your organization it (spam, unsolicited email, call it what you will) harms the email marketing industry as a whole. So rather than spend time trying to justify their actions, these folks should put their time into something constructive -- like building a high quality opt-in email list. Until next time.
Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Email
Marketing Strategy
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The
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