Question About Your Email List?

I think this is a really hard thing to measure first of all. The way they measure message opens doesn't even work most of the time, so that number goes out the window (I see more clicks than opens most of the time, which doesn't make sense).

The clicks themselves I think are a little easier to track, but then you have to use the autoresponders ugly tracking code, which I've been reticent to use. I'd be interested to hear some more stats and how others handle this stuff too.

You can only track open rate by sending HTML emails.

When you mail in dual format (HTML and text) you'll only get the
open rates from those who received the HTML emails.

From personal experience - I'm a very skilled email writer who puts
out a lot of great content. Consistently, for the average email,
the open rate is 3-10%. That means that 90% of my subscribers
ignore most of my emails. I reckon about 5% are fans who open
my stuff pretty consistently.

These are the numbers I've seen consistently for a long time.
Somebody will wade in, probably, and tell of their 40% open-rate
or something, but I don't put any credence in such figures,
such claims are kind of like Paypal screenshots, impossible
to verify.

One way to boost your open rate is to tie your subject lines
in with current events: the news, celebrities, TV shows, movies
and so forth.

Another good way to boost open rates is by promising something
"funny" in the subject line. It had better be funny though. Some
marketer sent out an email about the "weirdest marketing video
ever" and it was FK playing his guitar.... which is not weird at all
so I unsubscribed to the guy for BS'ing me. Weird would be some
guy doing his marketing video by talking from his butt-cheeks a-la
Jim Carrey in "Ace Ventura - Pet Detective"

Talking butt video - for those who are curious

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Don't let yourself get distracted by trying to find out what some else will tell you a "good response rate" is.

The only thing that you want to focus on is "What response rate do YOU need to generate actual profits?". And the only figure that really matters is your CLOSE ratio. In other words, how many sales do you actually need to close to make a profit?

Calculate your true profit per sale.

Determine how many orders you need to generate profits.

For the sake of discussion, let's say that you need to generate 10 orders to break even.

If you generate 11 orders, you're in profit.

If you have a list of 10,000 subscribers and all you need is 11 orders to be in profit, your minimum close rate needs to be 0.11%.

If you can get your close rate up to just 1%, then you would make 100 sales.

Get that close rate up to 2% and you have 200 sales.

As you build your list and continue marketing to your list, be sure to track your results. You'll begin to build your own benchmark for what your minimum close rate should be and you can then use that information to gauge YOUR success.

As other people have mentioned this figure really varies and you should more just concentrate on what yours is and possible ways to increase it - play with titles and see what works for you.

For the record tho, in general my normal open rate is 15-20%, so FOR ME an open rate of above 20% is good, and below 15% is pretty poor.

There is another thread here:

which has some info on how to increase open / click rates, but if you do a search you will find a lot of advice / guides on this matter.

Thanks for the advice on this. I have always been unsure as I get about 7% on adverage on my open rates. I have never heard too many people talk about this so I wa a bit couious.

If anyone else has stuff to share I would really love to hear it.

Thanks Billy
That is what I was needing to know.