One of the most important pieces of email marketing is knowing how to improve email open rate, which is why we’re taking a deep dive into it today.
IE 297: How to Improve Email Open Rate with Liz Wilcox
Our guest’s name today is Liz Wilcox, you know that feeling when you listen to an awesome podcast or you go to a webinar and there’s somebody out there that says “Oh my gosh, you gotta email your people”.
So you go over to your computer and open up convertkit or whatever you’re using and you sit down and promptly feel kind of stupid because you don’t know what to write.
Liz helps eliminate that problem and makes writing emails pretty simple.
What is a good email open rate?
This is a complicated question especially with the new IOS update as of September 2021 that has kind of changed the game.
So our open rates are not as accurate as they used to be, but that’s not to say we cannot use them to understand our emails and who’s opening them.
Email open rates are actually inflated, so if you’ve seen at the time of this recording, it’s spring, early summer 2022; if you’ve seen in the last six months, that your email open rates have gotten better.
They are anywhere from five up to 20% inflated, but that doesn’t mean they’re not consistently inflated.
If they’re consistently inflated, and you’re getting 40% across the board every single week, every month, then you can just use that number as okay, this is probably inflated but at least it’s consistent.
If it goes from 40-45% you can smartly assume that it did increase by 5%.
It’s not that they’re completely inaccurate, they’re all over the board, you know we’re not just throwing spitballs at the wall in high school.
They are still accurate in that way that they’re measuring but they are probably inflated.
So what Liz wants you to do is take that and know that there is always room for improvement.
Right now as a blogger, if you have a small list, you should be aiming for that 30-50% range and really looking at the welcome emails.
Really looking at those welcome emails to make sure those are the highest that they can be and that’s going to get your newsletter up to.
Liz says anywhere from 30-50%, Liz’s welcome emails personally are about 80-60% open rate and her newsletters are about 50-60% open rate.
And that’s inflated, conservatively they’re more like 45-50% and that’s still really good, so if you can aim for the 40% range, that would be really good.
Does your subject line matter when writing an email?
Sure it does, it really helps, but what matters even more is just building that firm foundation and getting it to be like “Oh my gosh Jenny just sent me something”.
If you can work on your email game to get it where people are just seeing your name and opening, then you don’t have to stress about subject lines.
The inbox is the same as the mailbox, so you go out to your mailbox and you grab whatever is in there, there’s no subject line on the mailbox, you’re just looking at the sender.
We do the same thing in the inbox, you go out to your mailbox and oh that’s a bill, I don’t have to open that but say Liz sends something and the reaction is more like “oh my gosh Liz sent me something what the heck is in here”.
You can use the inbox the same way where it’s like “Hey that’s a bill I don’t have to click on for a couple of days, I thought I unsubscribed from this, and then “oh my gosh Jenny sent me something I have to open it right now”.
So while the subject line totally matters, in your welcome sequence and in those newsletters lead with personality, your vision for your clients or students and your values.
That’s what’s going to get people to be looking at the sender.
How do we improve email open rates?
We’re trying to build a really firm foundation, think of it like building a wall where you lay one brick at a time.
In that welcome sequence, leading with a little bit of personality, your visions and your values are really important.
There has to be something about you that distinguishes you, there’s a reason why I invited Liz onto the podcast, there’s 1,000,000 email marketers but there’s something about Liz.
It’s kind of like a unique selling proposition that people can connect with.
People love that Liz has a different style, she’s very nineties and it makes her stand out.
Just some part of your personality that you can bring out very easily and putting that into your emails and then the vision.
You want people to think “I’m gonna open that no matter what the subject is because I like her personality”.
If you can put that forward in your emails over and over again, then boom it’s going to be like a hurricane.
It’s going to be over for everybody else because you’re going to be number one in the inbox.
What is a good click rate?
Liz would say to aim for whatever your click rate is right now, try to get at least 1% better and then another 1% better.
Click rates have never been 100% accurate, so don’t stress about “oh it could be this or that”.
All of these metrics in general are never 100% accurate, it’s usually consistently inaccurate.
It’s never all across the board, it’s going to measure the same every single time, so whatever your click rate is now, know that you can improve it.
To get people to click on your emails in the very beginning of your sequence, however people join your list, get them to click having more than one click per email.
It could be the same link, to a podcast etc, So you’re linking to this podcast but you’re putting it in there two or three times.
That way you’re giving an ample opportunity to be direct in email. You’re making buttons or making the font bigger, just making it very obvious in general.
How do we turn our email list into buyers?
What’s the point of emailing if we can’t have a full list of buyers?
Currently Liz’s list is about 40% customers and she’s almost at 5,000 at the time of this recording, so it’s kind of fun for her, like a game.
She’s very focused on the number of customers she has, so how do we do that you might ask?
Number one, set that foundation right there in our welcome sequence, we have to tell people “hey, I’m going to sell you stuff, this is a marketing channel right?”
It’s not like Facebook or Google where we expect ads, we expect Amazon links because Email is a little different right?
It’s this private channel but if we are explicit, very direct and upfront, it will flip a switch in the back of our subscriber’s mind.
Liz recommends having an entire email in your welcome sequence, dedicated to setting expectations the same way I do an intro on every single podcast.
You’ve got to say in the email somewhere “I’m going to offer you free and paid resources” whatever words you wanna use.
You have a mega swipe file. Can you tell me more about it?
As you’re listening to this your head might be swirling, Liz knows email can seem really complicated but she really wants to make it simple.
If you want to see all of those welcome emails that Liz was talking about in actual action, her mega swipe file has the entire welcome sequence.
It’s just four emails that are already written, you can take it and make it your own.
Liz also has three newsletter examples so you can see what the conversation looks like going forward.
Where are the best places to connect with you?
Liz is the most active on instagram @thelizwilcox
Action Steps:
- If you liked this episode of Influencer Entrepreneurs, please subscribe and leave a fabulous review!
- Join the conversation on Instagram by tagging Jenny when you’re listening to the podcast. She’ll send you a personal message whenever you tag her.
