Who Can Make Sense Of This Weird Behaviour?

In the past year, I learned that most of my new buyers came right AFTER they subscribed to my list. This may be the same case for you. When they come to your site and subscribe, they are HOT and are ready to buy.

That is my tip of the day. ;-)

Currently the only 50% open rate statistic you may see is in a hyped up sales pitch from an autoresponder service. And even they have toned the hype down to 29% ish. (which is still high and rarely achievable in these days). In marketing, it seems that 15.24% is on the high end, and in my niche 20.6% . Although in reality it's much lower in most cases.

As to why people are not opening your second email is hard to answer without seeing the first one.
I don't know that I would be drawing any conclusions based on only 30 sends though.

There could be a number of reasons for what you're seeing:

1. Follow up emails are being sent to spam folder. Check the spam rating from your list provider.
2. Emails aren't being delivered at all. Did you send a test to yourself or put yourself on the list?
3. Email subject and sender needs to be adjusted to increase open rate. Make sure you don't have a blank subject and the sender name is recognizable.

I'm unclear about the "freebie" you're giving away. Is there a lead magnet download they get immediately when they sign up? If so, they may be excited to get the freebie but then disappointed with its quality, causing them to ignore/delete the follow up emails.

Just remember that someone downloading a freebie is not a qualified buyer. Many of the experts say that they are and as long as you build hype and excitement in the freebie, they're likely to buy. That's BS though....a freebie is a freebie and people download them for hundreds of reasons.

For example, if your site is competing with mine, I'm going to download your freebie to see what you're doing...just out of curiosity. At the same time, however, I am not going to make any purchases from you, nor am I going to use my main email address. In fact, I've had a spam email address for almost a decade now exactly for those types of things and I check that inbox maybe once every three years.

So again, don't be discouraged by 30 clicks....that's nothing in the grand scheme of things and people like me (non-buyers) are usually the first to click. Just keep building your list like you're doing, consider adding a double opt-in so you can better qualify your list, and also offer a different CTA without a freebie. These types of things will help you see the bigger picture on who's clicking.

Lots of good advice - thank you for that. I think I will finish up my final product ASAP and build in a OTO on the sign-up confirmation page. BTW: I am already using the double opt-in procedure.

As for the freebie / lead magnet: It is good enough for a decent sign-up conversion and I am not even making any promises. I feel the quality of my material is pretty good, though I am hardly objective. I spent some serious time researching the best stuff and am sharing just that. But maybe my subscribers just have different expectations and actually want offers like "Get Rich Quick While You Are Sleeping". I will try to get some feedback from them once they start opening my emails :-D.

Well, 30 subscribers and not 1 open could mean alot of things:

1) Are you sending them emails everyday, or just twice a week?

2) Are your subject lines enticing?

3) Do they know what they're getting when they sign up for your offer?

4) Are these *quality* leads that are coming from Facebook?

Think about those questions for before abandoning the campaign. Testing and tracking is HUGE in this business, so good job asking us about it.