Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Decreasing Opening Rate

Posted by Anonymous on 7/15/2009 at 5:35 PM ET 25 Points
Hi All,

I have been emailing webinar invites or campaigns to the same list for almost a year now. I send out emails once a month and I found that the open rate has decreased from 24% to 10% slowly. Is this normal?

Daphne
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 7/15/2009 at 5:45 PM Member
    Is that 10% of the delivered list or 10% of the whole thing? Are you removing bounces and all of the dead wood from the list?

    Email lists churn quickly as addresses go bad. If you're mailing to bad email addresses, then that could explain the lower rate. How do you send out your emails?

    Apart from that, you could be experiencing apathy from your list if you're sending the same tired content. Perhaps people have either figured out that they don't need to open your email to know they don't want it, or maybe they figure they can always wait until the next email with the next offer.

    And of course, as more recipients block images, the lower your reported open rate will be, as it's an image that is used to track the open.

    Forget about the open rate for a moment...how is overall response?
  • Posted on 7/15/2009 at 5:59 PM Author
    Thank you for your response. Here is the email we send out on Tuesday.
    https://archive.constantcontact.com/fs041/1101367398083/archive/11026343104...

    I plan on mailing this email again to those who have not opened the email on either Friday or Monday.

    Our list has 3850 emails. Bounce rate is 14.8%. I will remove the bad emails in my next email. Open rate is 11.3%. Opt-out is 0.3%. Click-through rate is 3.2%. 8 clicks on our website and facebook page while 5 clicked on the webinar registration linke. So far, there has been 4 people signed up for the webinar. I have to start calling the list tomorrow.

    Daphne
  • Posted by Linda Whitehead on 7/15/2009 at 6:10 PM Member
    Hi Daphne, are those bounces a combination of hard and soft? What is the breakdown?
    I think your response rate is dropping because you are using your webinar to sell your product, instead of adding value to your clients' and prospect's lives. Educational webinars on topics of interest to your audience are the way to go. Your open rates are very low, and even though you need to clean your list, you should review your webinar approach. I have been practicing content marketing very successfully the last few years by finding out what the audience wants to know more about, and providing it to them.

    Good Luck
    Linda Whitehead
    Zuz Marketing
  • Posted by wnelson on 7/15/2009 at 7:16 PM Accepted
    Daphne,

    Your announcement for your present webinar has a pretty transparent purpose: You're trying to sell your service. People are signing up for 40 minutes of being sold to. If all your emails are like this, your drop-off rate is much less than I would have expected. After about the first 2 or 2, most people would have realized they DO or DO NOT have a need that your product fulfills. I mean, it's not like after 10 monthly emails, they wake up some day and say to themselves: Hey, that's just what I've been looking for! You can say "Take headaches away," or "Make your life easier," or "Make your registration smoother," or "more professional," but these things are all driving at the same problem.

    For a monthly email, if you want steady openings or even viral results (people passing it along to others), then provide them some value. Your email is a product and it in itself has to satisfy a need. Present your distribution with something that is of value to their business situation. For your product, present a top ten list of planning items for conferences or seminars or whatever makes sense for your audience. Provide links to other services or products - like name tags or booths. Provide guest columns. Include a joke related to conferences or seminars. Provide presentation tips or ideas on how to get great speakers. This is information of value to them. Included in that can be an ad for the webinar. The webinar might be spun to cover more specific features that set your product apart from other alternatives. For instance, "How to turn registration data into an "opted-in" list for email marketing at the touch of a button." This webinar could cover how to do this "manually" but demonstrate the "one-button" process with your product/service. The idea is that the webinar is valuable even if they don't buy your product/service. This will increase your open rate and your enrollment rate.

    I hope this helps.

    Wayde
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 7/16/2009 at 9:01 AM Member
    Wayde's right...again.

    Also, consider if your subject line is varied and well targeted to your recipients. If they don't open the email, then you haven't given them a reason to do so (or they've learned it's not worth their time to open it next time).
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 7/17/2009 at 7:51 PM Accepted
    Dear Daphne,

    With the exception of your subject line and webinar details, am I right in saying this is the SAME e-mail you've been sending out for the better part of a year?

    If that's the case, consider this. How dull is it to read the same message over and over again? How dull is it to read the same message over and over again? How dull is it to read the same message over and over again? How dull is it to read the same message over and over again? How dull is it to read the same message over and over again? How dull is it to read the same message over and over again?

    How dull is it to read the same message over and over again?

    Does this make sense to you? Bounce rate or not, if you're sending the same weary sales message to the same list you're going to bore people to death.

    So, here's a thought! STOP SELLING WEBINARS and begin offering benefits of benefits of webinars. I've listened to my fair sahre of these things to know the game: tempting schtick, a smattering of useful information, and a 30 minutes sales pitch.

    BORING! And on top of which it insults people's intelligence AND smacks them over the head with your a message. Would you sell to your Mum like this? No, I think not. She'd thwack you around the ear, and rightly so.

    And by opting out, this is what your recipients are doing. TEMPT THEM with something new, something fresh, and they might start listening. Use a video seminar. Offer them something they want in exchange for signing up. Make your sales pitch less sales like and more benefit driven and you'll increase conversions. But this will take time because you now have to rebuild or create new relationships, which isn't easy.

    I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
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