One email marketing metric that has been historically used is “email open rate.” The new changes released for Apple will change what business owners use to manage their email lists and measure success. Let’s review commonly used metrics and what you SHOULD use to track your email marketing success…
Email Marketing Overview
So what is email marketing? And why is it so crucial for business owners?
Email marketing uses an email program (such as Mailerlite) to email past or potential clients to promote products, services, or share information. Email marketing is more than just sharing a newsletter whenever you remember; it’s an opportunity for you to build relationships and nurture and attract new clients.
Email marketing is just one of many ways you can provide value to your customers, and those you think may be customers in the future.
What Is an Email Open Rate and Why Do I Care About It?
Email Open Rate has been the most common email marketing metric. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of email recipients who opened your email by the total number of email recipients. However, with Apple’s new privacy updates tackling email tracking, you may see big changes to your open rates.
Apple is now masking IP addresses and preloading your email content. So it will appear that someone opened your email even if they didn’t. This is problematic if you are only measuring your email marketing based on email open rate.
Did you see a jump in your email open rates in the fall of 2021?
So what should you use instead?
Click-Through-Rate
I recommend you use click through rates instead of email open rate to measure your email marketing success. CTR is a great way to see if people are opening your emails because if you have successfully captured their attention, they will want to click through your email to get more information.
Clicking on a link could lead them to a blog article, product, website, etc. You can also easily track how many times someone clicked on something within your email, which allows you to track engagement and tell you what your audience is interested in.
How Can I Make Sure That People Will Actually Read the Content of My Emails
There are two main ways to guarantee people will read your emails. The first is through your email subject line and personalization.
Personalize each email you send out by including their name within it. This allows them to feel appreciated and gives them a reason to click on something or open up what you have sent them! An important email subject line is concise, uses language that your target market will understand, and provides a clear call to action.
The second way you can guarantee people will open your emails is to consistently provide them with valuable information that they will read anything you send them. Building your email list with the perfect people helps to ensure they are waiting on the edge of their seats for YOUR email to come through.
Email Subject Lines – How to Create That WOW Factor
Writing email subject lines for your email marketing can be tricky. It’s one of the first things people see when they receive an email, so you want to make it count!
An effective email subject line is concise, uses language that your target market will understand, and provides a clear call to action. For example, “New Blog Post – How To Effectively Use Social Media Marketing And Facebook Ads” or “How Being A New Parent Will Change Your Life…”
You know what they say… humans have short attention spans! So use this opportunity to explain why they should care about opening up your email and reading your content.
What Should Be In the Body of an Effective, Compelling, and Engaging Email Email
What should I include? Your email content depends on what type of product/service you are selling, but there are a few important steps for creating high-quality, engaging content:
- The first consideration would be to understand who you are writing to and what they want and need to succeed.
- The second consideration would be to offer value! Make sure whatever email content you send offers something valuable for them whether it’s practical advice, helpful tips/tricks, industry news, etc.. By providing this information people not only see your email as relevant but also read through all of the content because it’s filled with useful info.
- The third consideration is relationship building and timing. Send email content that will allow you to continue building your relationship with them. You want to email people when they are actually looking for the info and at a time of the day, they will stop and read them.
Final Thoughts on Email Open Rate
Email marketing success all comes down to providing value for those who receive emails from us! Are we giving our audience enough information to know why they should be interested in what we are sending?
My team has put together a list of formulas you can use to create your amazing subject lines from our successful email subject lines. These formulas will ensure your message stands out.
