Many gurus suggest that, in email marketing, it’s important to ensure that the maximum number of people open your emails.
They are wrong. Actually, it’s more beneficial if fewer people view your email message.
Why is this?
Read on to discover why you could be making a huge mistake in trying to entice the maximum number of people to open your emails.
My Split Test Revealed a Surprising Email Marketing Discovery
A few days ago, I made a split test between two different email subject lines.
Beforehand, I felt almost certain that subject line ‘A’ would return a higher opening rate than subject line ‘B’, and this premise proved to be correct.
However, I was shocked when I studied the AWeber statistics more closely. The revelation these figures revealed certainly taught me an important lesson about opening rates.
Subject line ‘A’ read: “Want to make Amazon share some income with you? (No, not affiliate business)”
As you can see, this subject line was meant to arouse curiosity, thus compelling my subscribers to open the email. And 17.9% felt impelled to so do, which I’m told is a very high opening percentage within the ‘money-making’ niche.
Success, eh?
No. In fact, a huge fiasco!
And I’ll tell you why in a moment.
Subject line ‘B’ read: “Want to create and sell your own Kindle books on Amazon? (It’s pretty easy.)”
In this case, I purposely revealed more of the actual content in the email subject line.
It was alluding to making money with Kindle books. Many people wouldn’t be interested in this topic, of course, so I only achieved an opening rate of 9.8%. (Average opening rate in the IM niche is said to be between 10-15%.)
Anyway, I had to ask myself: “What was the goal of this email? More importantly, what is the main overall goal of email marketing?”
In fact, my goal wasn’t simply to make people open and read my email, but to entice them click through – and preferably buy something.
AWeber’s statistics indicated that only 4.0% of group ‘A’ clicked through, whereas group ‘B’ achieved 8.1% .
In other words: More than twice as many from group ‘B’ clicked through and became potential buyers.
Why was that?
I have a possible explanation – and then more startling news for you.
A Stampede of Subscribers Searching For the Exit
No, none of my readers unsubscribed after receiving this particular email. I’m referring to those emails that you have probably received from other marketers.
I’m talking about emails with subject lines such as: “Your product paid for”, or “I need your address to send you your order”, or “Your order #78866222″.
All fake subject lines which, of course, are meant to trick the subscriber into opening the email, by thinking: “I didn’t order anything. Am I receiving something for free by mistake?”
I know what I did the first few times this happened to me. I opened the email, saw that they just wanted me to buy something, and immediately unsubscribed.
Since then, I’ve changed this routine. If I receive an email with a phony subject line, the only reason I open it is to find the unsubscribe link. I don’t even waste my time reading it.
So, that’s one risk you encounter if you try to mislead your subscribers into opening your emails.
Another premise is: Testing your opening rate might even stop you from making sales.
Why Keeping Statistics About Opening Rates May Actually Go Against Your Goals
In order for AWeber (or any other auto-responder service) to check your emails opening rate, they need to place a picture or some code inside your email.
This can only be done if you send it out in HTML format.
Back in the golden old days of the Internet, many email clients couldn’t read HTML anyway, so it was better to send them in clean text.
Today, almost all email clients can interpret HTML, but other pertinent circumstances have also changed along the way.
People now don’t only read emails on their computer; they read them on all types of devices, many of which cannot show HTML in the correct format, or not at all.
This means that if you send out HTML emails, you could potentially lose many readers.
However, you still can test your click-through rate which is, in fact, more important than the opening rate.
What You Should Have Learnt From All This
Make sure that your subject lines are precise, and tell enough of a story to ensure your target group opens your emails.
And send emails in text format rather than HTML, unless it is necessary to include pictures or other formatting.
Email marketing is about making money and creating relationships.
Not just being read.
About Britt Malka
I started to make money online in 1996, and since 2000 I've been living entirely from money made online.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You can also offer a choice to subscribers of which type of email they want – HTML or text. That way you get the best of both worlds in your marketing efforts.
That’s true, Jason. I remember doing that in the beginning, but I’ve totally forgotten about it. I don’t think it’s possible to give that choice with AWeber, but I haven’t investigated it.
Surly the key is to be completely honest, and the email to sound believable! For example if i read a subject of an email and its said “claim millions today”, i wouldnt believe it wouldnt open it.
If it said “claim your £156 owed to you” i would probably open it and find out the email is then liying to me. The email is actually a sales page and know one owes me money they just want me to sign up, this is a lie!
Not being honest! So i think the key is honesty!
Trying to trick the reader is never a good idea. Being honest and revealing the content in the subject line of the email is always the best approach from my experience. Kind of like preselling, you are setting them up for what is to come.
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