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    • Email open rates – What should they be? (including real world examples)

      Email Open Rates banner with laptop

       

      When you start building an email list, there’s only a few hard numbers you get back to tell if your emails suck:

      The Open Rate = This tells you how many people opened your email and loaded a hidden pixel (which is the way an email program knows someone opened your email).

      The Click Through Rate = This tells you how many people actually CLICKED a link in your email.

      It's very hard to find out what a “healthy” Open Rate is because people usually don’t share this private information.

      So we decided to ask the audience to share theirs....and people shared their private open rate numbers!

       

      Let’s peek behind the scenes at some real life Email Open Rate numbers!

       

      This is normally information that people keep super private, so let's be thankful for the info shared. Now let's start snooping into some private email open rate information!                  

       

      NOW, all of these examples so far are for broadcast emails (meaning they are one-time events).  If you start talking about an autoresponder sequence, you’ll usually see higher Open Rates because it means someone JUST signed up to your email sequence, so they are HIGHLY interested in what you have to say at that time:

      Here’s a screenshot of my email autoresponder open rates (also known as a “Follow Up Sequence”):

      image06

      Since the people getting these emails have JUST signed up to my copywriting newsletter, they are probably highly interested in the emails I’m about to send them with free copywriting advice, so naturally this group of people is very likely to open the emails, hence the 50% and above open rates.  

       

      Fact 1.) Almost every email open occurs within the first 1-5 hours of you sending it.

      Here’s a chart I pulled from an email I sent at 7am this morning.  This nose-dive graph is typical of email open rates.

      image09

      You can REALLY see how quickly people open emails when you view this on a daily scale.  This email was sent out at 7am on September 8th:

      image02

      Those are just my results, but the same nose-dive chart remains true for a whole mess of other email senders:

      image07

      Source: MarketingProfs

       

       

      Fact 2.) The best times to send an email is super late at night or early in the morning.

      I personally like scheduling emails for 7am Eastern Standard Time.  This way the email gets sent to everyone in the United States around the time they start waking up and checking their phones (very likely whilst on the toilet)!

      Reading phone on toilet

       

      You preferably want to send during the “uptick” times.  Usually people have more casual time to browse your email earlier in the day.  While someone might open your email at 2pm, it’s more likely they’re be busy or distracted with other things, preventing them from clicking or buying.

      image04

      Source: MarketingProfs + annotations by Neville

       

      image05

      Source: MarketingCharts

       

      Fact 3.) Some industries see very different results.

      I can’t prove this with numbers, but I think I know why the below chart looks like it does.  I do a lot of consults with different industries, and outside of the tech world, most people send their email lists HORRIBLE emails.

      They’re usually just pimping whatever product they’re currently releasing, and they provide NO value whatsoever to the reader.  Hence over time more and more people start ignoring the emails.

      image08

      Source: MarketingSherpa

      (By the way….If you suspect you’re sending out crappy emails, take my CopywritingCourse to correct that by tonight).

      I used to run an ecommerce company, and my email open rates were typically around 13% give or take.  That’s higher than the average.  BUT THEN when I started applying proper copywriting techniques in the email, they shot above 22%.

      When you’re attempting to sell something, and more than double the amount of people pay attention to you on each email, that’s a GREAT re$ult!  

       

      Here’s a summary of everything we learned here:

       

      Best days for sending out emails:

      Best days for email open rates chart

       

      Best time to send an email range:

      Best time to send an email

       

      Best time to send an email:

      7am is best time to send email

       

      Click through rates stats:

      Click through rates stats

       

      Time from email sent to email read:

      Emails get opened quickly

       

      When to check your email open stats:

      wait-a-little-for-email

       

      Autoresponder open rates:

      Autoresponder open rates

       

      Email Open Rate Scale:

      \Email open rates testing scale

       

       

      Download this Email Open Rates PDF:

      Click here to subscribe
      --Free to share with colleagues--
      --Includes all images, charts, findings and screenshots seen here--

       

      Sincerely, KopywritingKourse - Neville Medhora  
      P.S.  Here's some other articles that will help you with email open rates:

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