List Owners - What sort of Open Rates are you getting?

Open rates are not a reliable way to compare the lists
between different owners.

Third party autoresponder providers measure their open
rates in different ways.

For example, the open rate for AWeber messages uses
total opens (even if a user has opened the message
multiple times). In contrast the open rate figures for
Infusionsoft are based on unique opens so it gives you
a more realistic figure.

So, you need to be comparing apples with apples and
have the same way of tracking opens between you
and whoever you're comparing your list to.

Open rates are also wildly inaccurate because they rely
on a tracking image placed in HTML messages only and
they don't always get triggered at the subscribers end.

For example, I use Microsoft Outlook to view my e-mails
and by default it doesn't allow the tracking image to be
downloaded. So even though I open the e-mail, it doesn't
count as an open on the other end.

I only use open rates as a guide for my own list to assess
the relative success of subject lines, etc.

To improve my open rates, I segment my lists thoroughly
so that I send people more relevant messages that they
want to open, read and act on.

Dedicated to your success,

Shaun

Aweber actually gives both Total Opens and Unique. I sit around 25% for my follow-up series.

It can still give a rough indication on if you are doing something wrong. If the majority of people are getting open rates of 50%+ I would like to find out why my list is only opening at 5% (for example).

You can then try and narrow it down from here by finding out why your list is underperforming. If everyone else has a list of buyers and your list is full of freebie seekers then that is one starting point. If other lists full of freebie seekers are still in the average range then maybe subject title, or amount of promotion etc could be looked at.

It might not help you make ground in the middle area but it might help those on the extremities. If someone with a reasonably sized list starting saying they get nothing less than 75% then I would like to find out what they are doing that's unique.

A person new to list building (like myself) might not have a clue what to expect and their great numbers might actually be quite ordinary.

Shaun

Is quite right in saying that comparing open rates across different markets just causes too many variables to be involved. If you have a segmented list you would notice that for example the internet marketing niche has a vastly different open rate compared to that of the arthritis niche. Because one really needs their problem to be solved and they are sure to try and cure to get it.

I am sure if you looked across a few markets you would see the same effect and also see the effects of how long you have built a relationship with that subscriber has an effect on the open rate.

I have most of my lists split into 3 levels for each niche

A beginning relationship phase which has an open rate of about 25% on average

A Buying relationship phase in which a subscriber has become a customer and bought one of my products this has an open rate of about 40-45% on average

and then my loyal customer phase where a person has bought either a $4000+ product or bought 3 products from me. In this phase the open rate is about 125% because it is almost pure content and only 5% is soft sales. ( the reason why the open rate is so high is because multiple people re-opening and re-reading the emails, if it was used with unique open rates it would be 80-90%). This is only because I treat these customer with the upmost respect and integrety I don't cross sell to them at all. Unless it is one hell of a good product, for example I won't ever tell them about Kajabi because it is just a big black hole waiting to happen and I told them that. These people are also my biggest sneezers (if you don't know what sneezers are go read Seth Godin's book Ideavirus) they will tell people in their lists about my products.

I also have some people pay to be apart of this list as I make sure that it is a super exclusive and only for my most loyal customers and most, if not all of them know me personally.

So that is just a short little rant about how different market and segmentations of a list in a market can greatly affect the open and conversion rate of a list. I hope this shows a little light on how the question you have asked is so broad that you will be unable to get a very accurate answer

Josh
The Crazy Email Marketing Professor

Hi Kieran,

I'm getting an open email rate of between 20% to 25% depending on what free offer you are providing to your prospects. Afterwhich, an email open rate of 50% to 60% can be achievable with some testing involved. Generally, I would use different email open rates to test the subject lines so as to further improve my conversion rates for either my free offer or my buyer list.

Hope it helps...

Raymond

Open rate is important, but what matters most is the number of clicks you get. There are no 'Order Now' buttons in the email.