Naked Email achieves an average open rate of 58%
As you know we like to bare all, showing you that we practice what we preach in email marketing. That’s why we are keen to share our success, and to reveal where we feel we could still improve.
After 3 issues Email-Worx has an average unique open and click rate of 58% and 27% respectively and we are very proud that we appear to be providing value to our subscribers. However we still feel that there is room for improvement, but where do we start? That is a difficult question if all we look at are the average open and click rates and highlights the limitations of basic metrics.
We would like to know answers to questions like:
• How many of our subscribers have interacted with at least one issue?
• How many people have not opened a single issue?
• How many subscribers have opened and clicked on every issue?
In the next issue of Naked Email and Metric of the Month we’ll have generated sufficient data to start looking at subscriber behaviour over time, which is where we believe the real intelligence lies.
Campaign Based Metrics
ISSUE 1 ISSUE 2 ISSUE 3
Right Left Right
Deployment Date TOTAL /Av.
12-Jan-09 26-Jan-09 09-Feb-09
Campaign Based Metrics
Pushed / Sent 1,689 388 654 647
Total delivered % 98% 99% 97% 99%
Hard bounced % 0.8% 0.5% 1.8% 0.2%
Soft bounced % 0.7% 0.5% 0.9% 0.8%
Unsubscription %
The number of subscribers to Email-Worx is up from 388 in issue 1 to 647. We’ll be continuing to work on this number. What continues to be good news is the fact that we have not yet had any unsubscribes. We have had some clicks on the unsubscribe link but no subscribers have gone on to unsubscribe.
Even with a delivery rate of between 98% and 99% (see what best practice can achieve) we are concerned that we have any bounces at all! While the bounce rate is way below average, given that everyone on the list opted-in less than 3 months ago, received a welcome message and has been mailed regularly we are somewhat surprised.
We could probably reduce the hard bounce rate by adding email validation or moving to double opt in, but as we our primary objective is list growth, we have chosen not to do so. The number of soft bounces is more puzzling and we are investigating the issue further will report back soon.
Engagement Metrics
ISSUE 1 ISSUE 2 ISSUE 3
Right Left Right
Deployment Date TOTAL /Av.
12-Jan-09 26-Jan-09 09-Feb-09
Opened % 58% 63% 57% 54%
Total clicks % 69% 92% 68% 47%
Unique clicks % 27% 31% 29% 21%
Click to Open Rate 46% 49% 50% 38%
Click Quotient 2.54 2.97 2.37 2.28
Pass along referrers % 3.2% 3.9% 3.5% 2.2%
Pass along referrers (% of opens) 5.4% 6.2% 6.0% 4.0%
Pass along quotient 1.87 2.47 1.86 1.29
Although the engagement seems to be falling, we are not yet overly concerned as some kind of drop off is inevitable when you have a brand new list. In addition Email-Worx would appear to have a long shelf life the open rate for Issue 1 has grown by 3% in the last month and the number of total clicks by 19%! We will continue to update these metrics as time goes on.
The average click to open rate is 47% and the click quotient or clicks per clicker is still over 2 so on average our subscribers are finding at least 2 articles or features of value in every issue. So what have you been reading?
Our unsubscribe link generated a number of clicks but a 0% unsubscribe rate. This builds the case of having a two stage unsubscribe process as it is not uncommon for email subuscribers to check whether they can unsubscribe. We have also given you the option to reduce frequency in our unsubscribe process which we hope has contributed to people choosing not to unsubscribe.
So what are our next steps?
We’ll be continuing to work on growing our list through every touchpoint with clients and potential clients as discussed in the last edition of Naked Email. Feel free to help us by forwarding Email-Worx to anyone you think will enjoy receiving it.
We’d like to see more subscribers reading more articles (clicking on more links). We’re adding a rating scale to each landing page to find out what content our subscribers find most useful (don’t forget to let us know your thoughts).
We are also going to start looking at subscriber behaviour in much greater detail, this will show us what proportion of our subscribers have opened or clicked on at least one message, how many subscribers have interacted with every issue, or every second issue and how engaged they really are.
Last updated: Nov 05, 2014 admin
