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Click rate of plain text email: 1% Click rate of html email: 0.3% That's very low and yet the result was, loudly claimed in bold, that the plain text one had
by chippy 9y ago
Click rate of plain text email: 1%
Click rate of html email: 0.3%
That's very low and yet the result was, loudly claimed in bold, that the plain text one had 3.3x more clicks than the designed email!! Also, the opened rate is within the margin of error and therefore insignificant. I may not be a data analyst, yet I look at the analysis and think to myself, "eh?"
- maho 9y agoEach email went out to 12,000 people. 125 opened the unstyled mail, 37 opened the styled mail. That result seems pretty significant to me.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- chrisfosterelli 9y agoYeah, that's statistically significant according to kissmetrics: https://www.kissmetrics.com/growth-tools/ab-significance-test/ https://www.kissmetrics.com/growth-tools/ab-significance-tes...
- gipp 9y agoI'd call 1% quite high.
- gabemart 9y agoReally? The last newsletter I sent out went to ~20k people and had a click rate of 18% - although I think that's out of people who opened it, which was 51%. I don't know much about this space, but 1% of people seems really, really low if it's people who have actually asked you to email them
- gk1 9y ago(Author here) It varies. Well done on your 9% overall CTR--that's fantastic for a list of 20k. Not all companies are as fortunate to have an audience like that, so for them an increase from practically 0% to 1% is a big deal, even if there's still more room to improve. I should update the post to include a few more recent examples from other companies, that had higher baseline metrics but still saw improvements from simplifying their emails.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoThis represents everything I hate about email marketing. You’d honestly consider wasting 99 people's time, and possibly engaging 1 person, as a 'good' result? The bar for email marketing is set so low, it might as well not exist. Email was a free, effective communication mechanism that we’ve all but ruined. At least a return to plain text might rescue it to some extent, but I fear it’s already too late.
- ballenf 9y agoSeen in the context as just another form of advertising, 1% is well within the range of acceptable engagement. I agree with you, but suggest that the frustration is with the broader issue of "noise" pollution created by advertising incentives.
- tgb 9y agoUsers can't really tell that an email is styled or plain before opening it, so if the opened numbers were too different, I'd be concerned that something was up.
- MiguelHudnandez 9y agoYes, it seems the open rate should be attributed to the subject line or the a/b split parameters more than the design... And with the open rate that significantly affected, all other metrics would be skewed as well.
- worble 9y agoCould the difference in open rate possibly be attributed to the email no longer being picked up by spam filters / not going to googles "promotions" tag like mentioned in the article?
- rmurri 9y agoNot necessarily the full story. I have set my preference to text email over html email in one client that I use. This is at least one example of a client making the decision before opening the email.
- yellowapple 9y agoPer the article, it's probable that the styled emails are being flagged as promotional (or outright spam) and thus being filtered from immediate view by various mail clients (including Gmail).
- tgb 9y agoGood point!