Issac G's Blog

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A little bit earlier in the day today, I happened to be looking at the stats of an email campaign that I’d sent out to my list yesterday, and a co-worker at my day job happened to be looking over my shoulder.

For those who don’t know, I am actually one of those rare few folks in the world that do IM despite having a day job that I’m completely satisfied and happy with. I actually work as a very senior technical developer and marketing advisor for a large online advertising company (which is a nice way of saying that I have the privilege of thinking up IM gimmics and actually building them on my own with management’s blessing [and budget!] which is something that very few marketers get to do). But I’m getting sidetracked (as I often do )

The point is, I was looking at this email campaign’s tracking stats, and noticed out of ~1150 subscribers that I’d sent to, I had a very healthy open rate of 9% and an even healthier clickthrough rate of 6%. (For the newbies out there, email tracking is always “pessimistic” in that the real stats are usually an order of magnitude better than the reported statistics – because email is really really hard to track due to security associated with emails, like spams, phishing attempts, and the likes).

So my co-worker (his name’s Michael, but we call him Miko) takes a look, and asks me “Issac, how the heck did you get such a good open rate?” Hmph – once again proves that even the big advertising companies don’t always know the answers better than those of us who go solo. But that’s not the point I was trying to make.

So anyway, Miko looks at the email subject, and immediately starts coming up with a thousand different reasons why it should, or should not, get such a response rate. Because he’s used to 5% open rate on a great email on his campaigns.

The truth is that a big factor is how you treat your list – something that a lot of marketers who get thrown into online marketing don’t immediately grasp. See, while the thousand factors about the email subject were certainly a big factor (I could email crap with a catchy subject line and get great results, or email the holy grail of Internet Marketing with a bad subject and get a 0% open rate), Miko was missing what is, in my opinion, the biggest and most important factor of all.

The “Google Effect”

No, it has nothing to do with GMail. It doesn’t even have to do with the word Google which was in the subject line of the email in question (and I’m personally betting that adding that word upped my open rates by 1.5% alone).

It has to do with what I wrote about a few days ago – the fact that people trust Google to rate people, because Google looks at everything on the Internet and has done so for a long time.

See, Miko didn’t factor in the previous hundred emails that I’ve sent to my list over the past year, and the trust which the quality and quantity of those emails built between my subscriber base and myself. It’s that trust factor which was responsible for doubling both my open rate, and the clickthrough rate. The subject just had to be good enough to not screw that trust rate up (and the good subject certainly didn’t hurt )

When building your list, it’s important to keep in touch with your subscribers on a regular basis. Whether “regular” should be daily, weekly or even monthly is entirely up to you, but you SHOULD keep to your schedule (not to the day, but you get the idea). And don’t abuse you subscribers – they’re your greatet asset, and you want them waiting for your next email… Craving it… Drooling in anticipation of it…

You aren’t going to get that kind of response if every email is “Buy this”, “Buy that”, “Look what just launched – join under me” (well, you actually could as long as there’s some valuable content mixed in the messages along with the blatant sales pitch).

Also, (and I’m surprised how many people just don’t get this), if you’re building a business or marketing list, your subscribers DO NOT want to get daily jokes, email care cards, chain letters with heavenly blessings, or the likes. They have friends and family to send them content like that. If you’re their family or friends, then you shouldn’t need a mailing list, and if you’re not, then your subscribers DON’T CARE.

You SHOULD send them content that they are expecting. You SHOULD send them sales pitches on a regular basis (not EXCLUSIVELY, which is what I was trying to say above, but regularly). You SHOULD make sure that your email is something that YOU would read (if, that is, you weren’t recieving it from yourself of course) before sending it.

By treating your list with the respect it deserves, you’ll get better results – “Do Unto Others What Thou Wouldst Have Others Do Upon Thyself”, and so on and so forth.

Miko left the room with a thoughtful expression (and a lot of food for thought). I hope you do too.