What is the normal open ratio for emails?

Your emails sound like everyone else's in the IM field.

Ask yourself, how can you differentiate yourself? How can you provide valued content that makes people *want* to read more?

It's been a very long learning curve for me too, but I've found that adding human interest and talking like a friend and not a marketer definitely helps at times. Sure, I always include my product pitches, mind you...but I also want folks to anticipate learning from me as well.

If you'd like ideas for creating email headlines, mosey on over to:

5 Ways To Write Email Headlines That Get Read
How to Write Magnetic Email Headlines

and don't forget the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer - I've been pointing folks there for years.

Advanced Marketing Institute - Headline Analyzer

Hope that helps!

Anywhere from 25% to > 100% (from forwards) with my 5 subscribers. Looking at the headlines, subjects indicating something new pertaining to the thing people signed up for get the best open rates.

Well, no ... it's very low (as you suspected) but it's a tiny sample-size and doesn't necessarily mean too much. You really need at least 100 people on a list to be able to monitor open-rates meaningfully.

Are you sending HTML, plain-text, or both?

Only HTML open-rates can be monitored, really. At least, plain-text open-rates can be monitored only when people also click a link inside the email. (I'm just wondering whether it's possible that your figures aren't reliable?)

It's true that title lines are one of the factors that determine open-rates, but (contrary to popular belief) they're a really minor, "late-stage" one: where the traffic came from, how people came to opt in, what they got back from opting in, their expectations and especially the extent to which what they received was designed to ensure a high open-rate are the main things.

I'd better not comment on the actual titles you've used, since it's clear that you're in the "internet marketing advice" market, and I'm delighted to say that sending emails is to subscribers in that market has no part of my experience at all! I do suspect very strongly that that market is going to have far lower open-rates, overall, than almost any other, though.

Thanks Barbling,

I ran the subjects through the Headline Analyzer and these were the EMV results

1) Yes, you can create a new online business within 24 hours - 27%
2) This is the most important thing you will read -22%
3) Andy Fletcher spills his super-secret SEO strategy - Free - 44%
4) It's not about you - 50%
5) All you need is a tough teacher - 42.68%

This is what the site says
"And for comparison, most professional copywriters' headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines."

Based on that, the first two were bad, the last three not bad.

Great links by the way. Thank you. Learnt a lot. Will try and put that into practice.

Di

13 subscribers can not give you any reliable data about open rates, and certainly not enough for a split test. My advice is to forget about the stats for now until you have like 100 subscribers.

In your case and in the IM or work from home niche, probably the other 12 who didn't open your emails are all using unintended emails or are just bombarded with other marketer's massages all the time.

Don't rush the results ... give it sometime to grow.

As for your question about the normal open rate, from my results in the IM niche it's between 9 and 14%.

One thing you can do to increase your open rate is to put your messages in the form of a free pdf report and send them the download link with a message subject like "{firstname!} download this new pdf report about ..." (always personalize the subject).

I hope this helps.

Di,

As others have already mentioned there are many factors
that can influence open rates.

One factor that many people overlook is the from address.
Sending your emails from a free address such as Yahoo,
Hotmail or Gmail will have an adverse effect on your open
rate.

You should get better results if you send from your own
domain.

I love it that you're tracking your open rates and taking the
time to look for ways to improve your results. :-)

John

If I were you, I would not make any changes yet unless you are getting unsubscribes or people are emailing with negative feedback.

Why? Because your sample size of 13 is so small. Plus, it also would depend on the quality of the subscribers to your list.

If you are promoting a lot for something free and then they get the something free the first email, well, that may be all those people wanted in the first place.

To really evaluate this good enough to give you any sound advice, I'd have to know what the promotion was for the sign ups, what you gave away and what the first email said.

However, even with that said, I would still wait until I had more people on the list and started getting unsubscribes before I'd make any changes.

First off, ask yourself how they got on your list. How does the subject line and sender relate to that?

The cardinal sin of list building is to get people on the list without the expectation that you're going to contact them.

Eg Instead of your squeeze page saying "Sign up to get free THING now" say "Sign up to get free THING now and receive my awesomely helpful newsletter that will do XYZ for you"

If they got on the list by purchasing stuff. Did you send them a follow up email saying "We've added you to our awesome newsletter where we'll stay in touch about product updates and other useful information"?

Once you've set the expectation, you need to deliver on it.

My 7.5k buyers list generated 5k clicks to my last launch simply because I set the expectation that I will contact them about awesome stuff and then have consistently delivered on that over and over again. Product updates, notifications about new products in the range and highly related products that should meet their goals. Please note that doesn't mean you have to promise a ton of useful free stuff and never sell. 90% of my emails have stuff for sale. But you do have to set an expectation and deliver on it.

Kudos for taking the time to actually test and track real numbers. Most people never do it and wonder why they never get better.

Hope that helps,

Andy

I don't think 10% is really that far off. I have had 25-30% but before with a 300k list I was getting about 8-10%.

anywhere from 10-40% but the problem is that you only have 13 people on your list.

Hi Diana.
from your fellow Johannesburger here.

I had an aweber account for nearly three years, and my subscribers fluctuated from between 280 and 500, I must admit that I never tried very hard to build the list properly, because i hate all those "marketing" emails myself.

I had opens from between 0% and as high as 50%, normally at around 20 to 25%.

I would like to ask you this, how many of the emails that you get do you open?
I probably only open 2 or 3 % and I am on quite a lot of list of marketers that I trust (John Taylor above is one of them) But when I am busy - I very seldom bother to read what I am being sent.
Some of these lists like Potpie Girl, I have been on for 2,5 years, but I still dont read them all.
So my point is not to worry about the open rates, just carry on split testing like you obviously are, and you will get the maximum out of your list.

By the way - I closed my Aweber recently, and my "list" is now all opted in to my feedburner account, and growing quite nicely thank you!

Good luck with it all

Rob

Diana...

Your headlines are okay. They could be a lot better though. This one for example, "Yes, you can create a new online business within 24 hours" is probably getting picked up by Spam filters. And with all due respect to Andy Fletcher, I don't know who he is (I'm not a big IMer) so the name's not a grabber unless you do.

I like mystery in my email headlines. Stuff like: If I'd Only Known This One Simple Thing When I Started...

It's often a mistake to market based on personal preferences but I'd open an email with that header.

IM folks are subject to a barrage of 'noise' day in and day out. So you've gotta make more noise than everyone else put together if you want to be heard.

Here's another: Marketing success secrets I learned from my cat. Now, I could actually write some intelligent stuff around that headline because I once had a cat who was a true warrior. He was always able to get what he wanted. He was a master persuader.

And if you start making your messages interesting and different in such a way (not necessarily with cats) people are going to WANT to see stuff from you. Do yourself a favor and get on Paul Meyers' list. He usually has very compelling headlines. Good luck.

Thanks Rob and Charles

Appreciate the new feedback. Rob, to answer your question - most of them but that's because I am only subscribed to a few. Did a spring clean a while back on my subscriptions.

Charles, I am in fact on Paul's list and he does have great headlines.

I might use the idea of "cats" but change it to my kids because they truly are masters at never taking "No" for an answer

Di

Hey, I would split test more headings so you know what works best for your traffic. Also try tesing a formal style against more of a casual style to see how people will react. Try playing around with capital letters.

Normal email open rate is 0

Anything else you get above that would be considered weird as the amount will depend on your skill as a writer of your content and Internet marketer

I, too, have had some trouble with this in the past and progressed at a snail's pace for a long time. I consider myself far from witty so trying to be a comedian with only a handful of words was a big deterrent for me getting my emails opened.

Something that I found worked pretty well for me was creating the subject line first and writing my email based off of that instead of the other way around. When you think about it, the subject is the most important part anyways. If you can't get them to open the email it may as well be a blank document inside.

In regards to the open rate of emails...

Keep in mind that viewing an HTML email does not always constitute an open.
Let me explain..
Some clients can be configured to NOT automatically load images of html emails.
When this is done, your autoresponder will not register an OPEN.

There are still very many people that use outlook/thunderbird/etc to get their emails and these clients can be configured to open text ONLY emails.
This is another way that you will NOT detect an open.

Just a hint towards distracting you from putting too much faith and concern in the OPENING of an email..

It is not a very accurate system..

I would advise you count unique clicks from your own self hosted tracking script.

(my 2 cents)

...Rodger Hyatt

3 things you could do:
1) Try with the subscribers name {firstname!}
2) Figure out 'where' your subscribers are? Rookies, intermediates? And write subjects accordingly.
3) Try completely different subject lines, something absolutely not related to marketing and 'selling'.

This solely depends on your relationship with subscribers.

I've got 80%+ and 60% click through by having a new fresh list with eager subscribers. Older lists tend to perform less efficiently as your trust factor will be lower.

Daniel

You could divert your focus on other useful things other than 'open rates'..
like;
toenail clipping toss contest
refrigerator dairy expiration dates
3rd cousins birth date

The above mentioned examples will provide you a much more fruitful feeling of 'time well spent' and yield better results.


All joking aside, your open rates are going to continuously fluctuate depending on too many things.
Write a good relevant subject, write a good email, go to paypal and keep hitting refresh, that's where your results will be monitored.

Mark Brownlow has a guide to understanding open rates posted at EmailMarketingReports.com which might be helpful for some.

Regards,
Jim

Typical average is 15-25% for some of my list. Some highly targeted lists though get up to 30% sometimes, while some others do go down to 10%