Prescription for Anaemic Open & Click Rates

Increasing Open & Click Rates

Last night, I received a text message from a client that runs a real estate industry trade group website. I’ve helped them figure out the “Owner’s Manual” part of operating their website and they’ve been great to work with on their project. Tom’s text read:

“What is an average open rate for email campaigns? What is average click rates? Just ball park me”

First off, I was psyched Tom was even paying attention to the Open and Click rates. He’s been interested, engaged and has continued to reach out with questions – sweet! In short, he’s paying attention and it’s paying dividends. Now, at times, he’s fought a bit of an uphill battle on the “way we used to do it” and has just continued to plow through to create success. Organizational change is difficult at best; as an industry trade group comprised of mostly volunteer positions, it is even more difficult to implement.

As with anything, when your client is engaged, it raises your level of engagement. It’s only human nature. You have to give to get. I called him immediately and gave him the typical industry dependent, quality of list, recognized sender, engaging subject line, level of organizational trust, yadda, yadda, yadda. I wanted to know what he was seeing and why he was asking. As I suspected, the open rates and click through rates were anaemic. To date, the best open rate was 38% and the best click through rate was 12%.

Now, this news surprised me. As an industry trade group, the membership pays hundreds of dollars per year to gain access to programs and “inside information” that the trade group puts on. I ran Tom through the potential reasons:

• From – the group is using a standard, “Industry Trade Group – Chapter Administrator” as the from address. We chose this structure because all members are well aware of their own organization. As well, the chapter administrator is the main point of contact and is a recognized name.
• Subject line – Are the subject lines descriptive and compelling?
• Content – Are you delivering relevant, timely information that builds trust and drives click through rates and future open rates? Is the content you’re delivering with the time and energy of the membership?
• SPAM Blockers – perhaps some members within the organization have blocks on the Mailchimp domain setup by their IT department. They would need to white list the Mailchimp as a sender
• Frequency – are you bombing the list with information?

Since this group only recently completed their upgrade, I still consider this a group in transition. We have to train the members to go to the website, to open the email and how to use the new techonolgy for their benefit. The group is on the right path and the most important piece is consistently delivery quality, relevant and timely information that builds trust. Trust will build usage and the cycle will continue to spiral up in better open rates, click through rates and total member engagement.

Prescription to Improve the Anaemic Rates

1. Manually review the Subject lines for improvement. Copyblogger has a great headline content area
2. Manually review content – Is it professionally formatted? Is it delivering on the subject? Is it inspiring trust?
3. Manually review frequency – Are we bombing the list with an abundance of information? If we’re over-sending the list, I would recommend that you stop, develop a content calendar and strategically deliver information. Not everything can be an emergency or else members will develop email blindness to your message. What can be combined?
4. Split test sender: use only Chapter Administrator’s name, Industry Group Name, Combo of both
   1. Note: From a branding point of view, I would migrate to the Industry Group Name. The chapter administrator is crucially important, but could leave at any time. The equity should be in the brand name, not the person’s name.
5. Develop “Split Second” announcement regarding the new and how to use it to be in the “know” before every chapter event
   1. “Just a reminder for anyone living under a rock: the new website has launched, which manages industry news and registration to events like this one today. Please visit, update your profile and look for emails updating you. If you have questions, please see xx here today.”
6. Segment “Non Opened” email users over the course of the campaigns. Are there recipients who never open the mail?
   1. Check the address and make sure it is correct
   2. Send an email to that list using the Chapter Administrators personal email account. This is where all previous information came from in the past. Alert the members about potential SPAM blocking.

I trust that Tom and his group are exactly on the right path for success. Hopefully, tapping into these areas we can drive the open and click through rates significantly higher.