Average Email Response Rate

In this post, I want to show you how to improve your average email response rate. Feel free to watch the video above, if you don’t feel like reading.

Now, you might be thinking in the back of your mind that email marketing is not what it used to be. In fact, you might believe the hype and think that email marketing is dead… and maybe it’s something that you should give up on.

You might think more people are using their cell phones and maybe they’re responding over text faster than they are over email. Maybe people are using social media more and they’re responding over Facebook messenger faster than they are over email.

 

Is email marketing really worth your time?

I’m going to be honest with you. I began thinking along that path too and then I realized that it’s not the email marketing that’s the issue, it’s the response rate and you have to be able to work on improving that.

That’s exactly what I’m going to show you in this blog post.

But before I do let’s clear up some myths right now about this “email marketing is dead” ordeal. That couldn’t be any further from the truth. Email marketing is not dead! The truth is that email marketing is alive and well and I’m going to prove that to you right now.

SIDENOTE: By the way, this is a part of my new targeted email marketing services package. Be sure to check it out!

First and foremost, there was a study conducted by Optin Contacts and Oberlo. They said that currently, as of the time that I’m writing this blog post, we have about 4.2 billion email users and guess what, that number is actually rising. Oberlo and Optin Contacts have tracked it.

In fact, they went on to say that 2-3 years from now from the time that I’m writing this, we’re probably going to be increasing to 4.3 to 4.6 billion email users a day.

That’s half the world’s population!!

Optin Contacts also said :

75% of Millennials use email for business

73% of young adults actually open emails on their phones.

People might think “Well  yeah, they use their cell phones and they’re just texting and that’s it!”

Well, guess what?

They’re actually opening their emails as well. So, you  really have to take that into account when trying to figure out whether or not if email marketing is dead.

Here’s another statistic:

35% of people who use email have purchased from the brand that they’ve subscribed to.

Of course these numbers can vary depending on the industry, depending on your product or service, and depending on your offer. But the reality is that people are still using email to make purchases and conduct business.

Here’s another statistic:

72% open emails solely because of the discounts offered

If you’re able to position yourself to be able to get more people to respond to your emails, you can still have a profitable business and be able to get results in your business.

Is it really worth my time to focus on improving my average email response rate?

My answer is yes, it’s absolutely worth your time!

But here’s the question you’re probably asking yourself…

Why do I have a low email response rate?

I don’t want you to stress over this stuff!

I’ve actually made a couple of conclusions that I’ll discuss in a moment.

Before I do, let’s actually talk about the major components of what an email response rate is because we have to know what the problem is before we can actually address the problem with a solution.

 Two Major Components of An Average Email Response Rate

The two major components thst measure your email response rate are:

1. Your Email Open Rate
2. Your Email Click Through Rate

Let’s discuss the open rate first.

Email Open Rate

Your open rate is determined by the amount of subscribers on your email list versus the amount of subscribers who actually open your email.

For example, Take all the subscribers on your lead email list and ask yourself the following question…

Out of all the subscribers on my email list, how many actually open my emails?

That percentage is called your open rate.

Email Click Through Rate

Now, your click-through rate is determined by the number of subscribers on your email list, who actually open your emails versus the number of subscribers who actually open your email and click the main link in that email.

So, again out of all subscribers on your email list, a certain percentage are going to open those particular emails that you sent out. Again, that is your open rate. Once that percentage of subcribers open the email, then you have to ask yourself another question:

Out of all the subscribers on my email list who actully opened my email, how many are actually  clicked the link in the email with the intent of taking you up on your offer or taking some sort of action.

So, that’s your open rate versus your click-through rate.

Now that we know the major components of your average email response rate…

Let’s get a bit more detailed and talk some numbers…

What is the industry average email open rate and average email click through rate?

let’s get a little bit more detailed and look at some numbers behind all this…

But first, I need to have a REALITY CHECK with you!

I want to be 100% in genuine with you and keep it real, because the reality is that not everyone who subscribes to your email list will open your emails, there’s some people that are going to subscribe to your email list and they’ll never open the email.

And you might be wondering, “Well, why would they subscribe to the email list in the first place?”

Who really knows?

Honestly, there are a number of reasons why people subscribe, but yet they don’t even open the email.

That’s just reality …

Something that every business who uses email marketing has deal with.

There isn’t a single business that I can think of that has a 100% email open rate. That’s just not reality

Also, not everyone who subscribes to your email list, who actually opens your emails. will actually click the link in your email. So again, people who actually open the email, might just read it and take no action. Again, that’s just reality.

So, we have a real dilemma, we have really a real problem that we need to solve and figure out.

Let’s look at some numbers…

It’s important to note that this is the average mentioned below is of all industries across the board.

The average email open rate  is said to be between 20% and 40%.

The average email click-through rate is between 2 and 2.69%

So let’s say you have a 100 people on your email list right now and your email open rates  is 20%, then that means only 20 people actually open your email. Now, we take those 20 people and let’s say we determine your email click-through rate is 2.69%… Then it may be only one person who actually clicks the link in the email, while everyone else may have just read the email.

No you really have to take a step back and realize a few things…

At this point, you absolutely have to improve your email response rate. Maybe that happens by sending more emails, craft better offers, or generate a more targeted email list of subscribers. But, let me boil this down, because you really have to look at  your company’s average versus the average of your industry.

So, whatever industry you’re in, you have to know the numbers. The reality is that your industry could be much lower or your industry could be much higher than that.

There are some industries I saw while doing my own research, that average fifteen percent, which is a really low open rate. However, again there are ways that you can actually improve upon that. So, you want to find out what your average is compared to your industry and then figure out what it is that you need to do to actually improve and increase your actual response rate, your open rate, your click through rate.

So, again we have to ask…

The first reason you might have a low email response rate

1. Email Deliverability

The first conclusion I came up with is called deliverability. We need to ask a very important question when it comes to deliverability.

Do your subscribers still have a valid email address?

Have you ever sent an email an the address bounces back because the person either gave you a bad email or the closed their account?

Here is an example of what typically gets sent by your email provider:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

subscriber@example.com 

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

 SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<subscriber@example.com>:
 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try
 550-5.1.1 double-checking the recipient’s email address for typos or
 550-5.1.1 unnecessary spaces.

There’s a lot of people that might have an invalid email on your list. The problem is that your open rate is still being calculated whether they have a valid email or not. So, you have to really go through your list and find out which emails are bad versus which emails are still active

Other questions you have to ask about deliverability…

Is your sender email blacklisted right now?

What I mean by this is the email that is used in your email marketing platform. The one that you use to send out the actual emails. It shouldn’t come from the email marketing provider that you have.

It actually comes from whatever email you put into that system and you have to ask yourself if your email is blacklisted?  There are ways you can look up your domain and find out if it’s blacklisted or not. If it is blacklisted, meaning that it’s looked at by most email providers as spammy or suspicious, then you’re going to be blocked and your emails are going to go to the junk folder.

Which brings me to ask more questions…

Are your e-mails hitting the spam folder / your junk folder?

Are your subscribers even getting your emails?

These are very critical questions because this will crush your open rate. Obviously, if they’re not getting the emails, they can’t open them.

Do you have a lot of gmail users on your email marketing list?

If you answered yes, then my next question is…

Are your emails going to the promotions tab?

Gmail typically has three tabs.

1. Primary (Main Inbox)
2. Social
3. Promotions

The primary tab is where people are automatically taken when they log into their email system. We’ll call this the “Trusted” tab. Meaning they’ll typically find emails from friends, family, and other people they trust who are are categorized under this tab.

The Social Tab is where you’ll see email notifications from sites like Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

The Promotions Tab is typically where all the business offers go.

Which tab do you think is checked the most?

If you guessed the Primary tab, then you’re absolutely right. Again, there is where people are automatically taken to upon login. If they check the Promotions Tab, then they have to actually click on it, which is an additional action.

Now I’m not saying people don’t check the Promotions Tab, but it’s not checked as often as the Primary Tab. I can ensure you that much! For the subscribers that don’t check the Promotions Tab all that often, it’s likely that they’ll never see your email and again that may be why your open rate is low.

If you have a lot of Gmail users on your email list like I do, there’s actually a solution that you can implement that can help. I’ll get to that in a minute.

You also have to find out whether your email marketing provider is flagged.

The question to ask is, “Does your email marketing provider have a good reputation with email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail (Outlook)? If your email marketing platform doesn’t have a good reputation with them and they’re flagged, then you’re screwed right out of the gate.

It won’t matter what solutions you try to implement in your email marketing campaigns because you’re going to keep hitting that junk or spam folder.

5 Ways to actually improve your email deliverability

I’m actually going to give you some solutions you can implement today.

1. Delete invalid and inactive email subscribers from your email list immediately!
   
   
   Check to see if all the email addresses on your list are valid okay. If you see any that are not valid, then you need to delete them immediately. Your email marketing platform should be able to tell you which ones are valid versus which ones are not, because it’ll say that they bounced back or were simply not delivered.You need to delete them because you’re not really getting the true open rate or click-through rate. That’s actually going to save you money. A lot of business owners don’t realize that they’re being charged for the amount of email users  they have. Even the invalid/inactive users.
2. Tell and Educate your subscribers on how to add you to their whitelist or address book as soon as they opt inHere is an example of a Thank You Page I made:
   If you get somebody to sign up for a special offer and you have a thank you page, then you need to have instructions on that thank-you page. Tell them to add your sender email to their whitelist or address book and actually show them how to do it. A lot of people may not be tech savvy, so you have to actually break it down and show them exactly how to do it.Here is the sample instruction video from that Thank You page above, that  I made a few years ago for new Gmail subscribers:

3. Get Un Blacklisted
   
   As much as I love the show, I would absolutely hate it if my domain got blacklisted. To find out if your domain is blacklisted, be sure to check here. You can also check other places by just going to google and typing in “how do I find out if my domain is blacklisted or is my email blacklisted. Remember, if your domain is blacklisted, then of course you’re business email is going to be blacklisted too!There’s a bunch of sites out that would help you determine whether or not your email is blacklisted and most of those sites are free. Some will even give you the steps that you need to take to actually get your domain off of the blacklist.I actually did this for a couple of companies that I did business with and I found out that their domain was blacklisted. (One of the companies found out from subscriber. Yikes! :O) We went in and implemented all these different technical steps dealing with their servers and so forth. It was pretty intense, but we ended up getting the domain off the blacklist.

   That’s when we finally saw an increase in their open rates and click through rates because of the fact that, now people were actually seeing their emails.

   McAFee has some sort of scanner you can install too. This tells you if your website is suspicious or not.

4. Change email marketing providers
   
   If your email marketing provider is flagged or  if it has a bad reputation, then your email response rate is going to be super low. If you’re not sure if people are getting your emails and you know you have a targeted email marketing list, but people just aren’t opening your emails, then you know there is a problem.This happened to me before. I kept sending out emails and I wasn’t getting a good response at all. I had a small list of people who I knew wanted what I was offering. A few of them actually commented on my facebook ads and sent me messages. Once I sent out the emails for a few days and didn’t really see an uptick in my open rate, I knew something was wrong.I reached out to a couple of my subscribers on Facebook and they said “Dude, I never got an email from you…” Come to find out the email marketing provider that I was using wasn’t as good as the one I could have been using. As soon as I switched, that’s when I saw an immediate increase in my open rate and I literally sent out the same email I sent out before with the old email marketing provider.

   Problem Solved! My results improved overnight!

   That told me right then and there that my old email marketing provider did not have a good reputation with Gmail, Yahoo ,Hotmail, AOL, and so forth. And yes, people actually still use AOL, so you definitely want to make sure that you’re able to reach all your subscribers.

5. Build a targeted email marketing listSend emails to people who actually want and need your emails. Meaning that you’re providing information. You’re providing value. You’re providing products that your subscribers actually want and need. That alone will dramatically increase your email response rate.

We just covered the first reason your might have a low email response rate.

Now it’s time for the second reason.

The second reason you might have a low email response rate

2.The Reason

You might be thinking to yourself… “How can the second reason be “The Reason?”

Stick with me here because it will begin to make more sense as you read on.

Here is the question to ask:

Have you given your subscribers a good reason to open your email?

Have you justified their reason for actually opening your email enough to where they are compelled to click the link?

When somebody logs into their email and they see hundreds of emails from different companies and all these different emails from friends and family they have to scroll through, it can be challenging for your email to stand out. They’re scrolling up and scrolling down and they’re only opening emails that are relevant, interesting, and important to them. They have valid reasons to open these emails.

Again… Have you given your subscribers a good enough reason to actually open your email?

Sometimes you open up some emails and you might feel like you’ve been misled. It might be a bunch of hype. It might be a bunch of junk and you’re like, “Man, I’m not clicking on this link, I don’t want nothing to do with this!”, and you immediately close it. You might even unsubscribe. It happens all too often and you have to ensure you take a step back and figure out how to make the proper adjustments.

Maybe you need to work on your subject lines. Make them more compelling or more attractive. Peak their curiosity! Work on your marketing message. Give them a good enough reason to justify the fact that they opened your email. At the very least, get them to think, “Maybe I should click this and see what this offer is all about or maybe I should click this and see what the next step.

Again have to identify what the reason is that people should open your email and you have to make that clear, so they can actually take action on it.

There’s actually 5 reasons I discuss on my targeted email marketing services page. Once you address these reasons, you’re going to see an immediate increase in your average response rate, your open rates are going to go up and again your click-through rate should go up as well.

On that page, I also talk about how to get more people to open and click your emails and how to continue increasing your overall email response rate.

Be sure to check out that page and if you’re wondering how we can help you with targeted email marketing campaigns for your business, go ahead and schedule a consultation with me. We’ll even  help you if you don’t even have an email list. I’ll help you get some things straightened out in that department.

Take care and let’s make it a great day!

Sincerely,

JL Ferren

PS. I just showed you so all this proof by breaking down the numbers and putting out real factual information to show that email marketing is actually trending up. Therefore, it’s up to you to get your business involved and make the necessary adjustments to get the results that you get. Check out our targeted email marketing services package now, to get started!