When you email your list and discover that you’re getting low open rates and low engagement, there are 4 key actions that you can take today – before it’s too late and your list dies.
Here’s our TLDR video guide on how to heal your list:
Why is this so important? Your email list is one of the most valuable business assets that you own.
If you’re wondering just how valuable – the eComm brands we work with, get around 30% to 40% of their revenue from sending emails to their list.
And the thing with lists is…
Lists are like people.
In fact, it IS a list of people – people who bought from you. Like people, lists can become sick.
You know when your list is in bad health if you’re sending email campaigns, and your open rates fall below 15% open rate.
Most of our clients see open rates of 25% – 40% open rates, but 20%-25% would still be healthy, while if your open rates hover around 15%, 10% or lower, you know you need to heal your list – or else it’s going to die.
A dead list is a list of unengaged contact. They have been neglected (or been sent too many uninspiring emails) so they lost interest in what you have to offer.
Even if they remember who you are, they will likely ignore your emails, won’t click on links within the email, or even report it as spam.
Note: with Apple’s iOS 15, tracking and split-testing email open rates becomes less accurate, though still possible. For the full details and workarounds, check out our guide on how to deal with this important change in the eComm landscape.
Now let’s see how to heal a list that’s in bad health.
Healing your list isn’t something you do with a magic wand that you wave and suddenly your list is healthy and engaged again. It requires ongoing action.
Throughout the years of working with eCommerce clients, we’ve identified 4 Key actions that we need to take, to keep an email list healthy and increase your open rates:
1. Send emails regularly
At least once a week, with content that’s interesting and valuable.
The reason that you must send emails regularly, no matter what, is that your customers get used to getting emails from you.
They learn to expect them and even look forward to them, that is, if your emails are awesome. And by “awesome” I mean full of value, interesting, with a design that’s nice to look at.
2. Split-test subject lines
Because the subject line is so critical in getting people to decide if they want to open your email or not, and thus critical to your open rate – then you want to make sure your subject lines are dialed in.
The thing is, you never know what really works best with your audience, unless you split test it.
For example, a client of ours hated emojis, but after some convincing she was open to split testing subject lines with and without emojis, and lo and behold – emojis almost doubled the open rates… and guess what, almost double the usual revenue she got per each and every campaign.
Need help boosting your store’s revenue with email marketing?
Click the button below and let’s talk!
3. Cleanse your list
As time goes by people change jobs, change their main email address, or they simply lose interest in what you have to offer.
You’ve got to get those unengaged emails out of your list, because they bring you bounces and spam complaints, which can really hurt your email efforts.
Just a few weeks ago we created such flow for a new client who came to us with really low open rates. They were seeing open rates of 12% – 15% which is a warning sign for an unhealthy list.
We designed the flow (called Sunset Unengaged flow) to single out and remove all those contacts who aren’t likely to open future emails, and also make sure we’re preserving those who haven’t been that engaged, but there’s still a chance to win back their business.
On top of that we also created a Win-back flow, and made sure we’ve had the relevant contacts go through the win-back flow first, then on to the sunset flow.
We’re already seeing the fruits of these two flows, and open rates are more toward the 20% range with a nice boost of sales as well. Still some work to be done to raise the open rates, and this is where the 4th action step comes in:
4. Send segmented campaigns
If you’re sending all emails to all subscribers, you end up hitting up a lot of irrelevant people, or people who have stopped engaging with you.
Email service providers such as gmail, are smart enough to pick up on this and if they detect that you are regularly sending emails to subscribers who don’t open them, they’ll just throw your emails into the spam folder.
This, in turn, causes your open rates to drop even further, because now people don’t even see your emails, they go straight into spam.
But with segmentation, you send only to the right people, at the right time and with the right message customized for them – which brings you high open rates and contributes to a healthier list.
These segmented emails, that are automatically customized to that particular person, for example a man or a woman, a dog parent / cat parent and so on – this is what gets people to open your emails and engage with them.
And if you want us to help with healing your list, so it gives you consistent revenue, or if you need any help when it comes to email marketing, just get in touch – we love helping brands to grow, scale and shine!
Need help boosting your store’s revenue with email marketing?
Click the button below and let’s talk!
