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I work with several clients that between them send roughly 1 million emails per day, every day, and we are small compared to others I know. They fully understan

I work with several clients that between them send roughly 1 million emails per day, every day, and we are small compared to others I know. They fully understand that there are people like most people here that hate email marketing of any kind. But the response rate to those emails is significant. On an average day they get a 15% open rate. Click rates and purchase rates step down at each stage depending on the purpose of the email, the offer, etc. But that is 150,000 people every day opening at least one email from one of these businesses. While the 91% stat is probably pure fantasy, the number is far higher than anyone would want to believe. eMail simply works. It is a large and vital part of many businesses. All of our lists are double opt-in so there is NO WAY you got on it by accident. We also aggressively clean our lists. Don't open an email in 30 days? You get automatically moved to a different funnel. Don't open an email in 90 days? Yet another funnel. 6 months? Off the list entirely. There is an entire process behind this. We don't want to send emails to people that don't want them any more than you want to get them. Bad lists create delivery issues and get you sent into automated spam filters by providers like GMail. They aren't sent to harass you, they are sent because they work.

paxy 9y ago
How do you know whether users have opened an email or not? Or do you mean interacted with the email (i.e. clicked a link)?
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  Unless they're base64-encoded, images in emails must load off a web server. By customizing the image URLs per recipient, the system serving those images can tell who saw the email. It's not perfect because: - Some preview functions load images, even if the email was not actually opened, and - Some email clients block images from loading by default, so it's possible for the user to open and read the text of the email without triggering an "open" signal. Clicks are much more reliable signals of intent, but there's far fewer of them.
- cjblomqvist 9y ago
  You can quite easily setup tracking, eg using Google Analytics
- stevewilhelm 9y ago
  Mixpanel for example, provides a mechanism [1]. [1] https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004690106-How-can-I-track-email-open-rates- https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004690106-How...
paulie_a 9y ago
Do you track open rates that result in clicking unsubscribe? I open a lot of email just to click that link
- vamin 9y ago
  It's not generally a significant effect, unsubscribe rates tend to be well under 1%. Most people just ignore emails they don't want.
  - SteveGerencser 9y ago
    This. The unsub rates I see tend to be measured in tenths of a percent or less.
    - paulie_a 9y ago
      I'd be curious in someone running an experiment that involved the unsubscribe link displayed as prominent as the marketing message.
      - patio11 9y ago
        N = 1, but I used to put it in the second sentence of my emails. The unsubscribe rate was still measured in basis points, although I had an unusually high quality list relative to e.g. most e-commerce shops.
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    Don't forget the people that abuse the "mark as spam"-button as unsubscribe link. I saw that beahvior with non-techy users - it's often easier to find than the unsubscribe link and has the same effect to them.
- mlevental 9y ago
  i wish devs understood something: whatever pathological behavior you're participating in is just that: pathological. 99.99999999% of people just read emails and do nothing insidious/clever/nefarious. there are literally like 5 people like you and 100,000 people just reading the email and either clicking or not clicking, buying or not buying, etc.
a_d 9y ago
I will attempt to argue against email marketing as a channel for any startup (B2b or B2c). 1. Channel is extremely crowded. Everyone has read the same best-practices and optimization techniques. So emails from most companies (each one of them thinking that they are ‘differentiated) regress in quality and content to a mean. 2. Because it is so measurable (a marketer’s dream), this channel becomes less about what the emails say, but more about tricks to get one to open and click. 3. Excessive click optimization might erode “brand” (my conjecture). Since “brand” falls under the “soft stuff” in marketing, it gets attention as a second class citizen after one has taken care of the measurable stuff. (Defining brand as the ‘impression a word creates in your mind when you hear that word’) 4. Once a startup gives up on the ‘crutch’ of email - may be the team will think anew and innovate. Due to its measurability, my personal opinion is that companies don’t explore other channels - meaning, there isn’t a lot of invention going on. If one visited a random saas startup and saw a day in the life of their “email marketing team”, I bet they are all roughly doing the same thing and have the same goals. I fear that no one wants to lose out on the 1% out of 1 million attention that emails are able to get - consistently and repeatably - and are thus like a drug that one can’t get off of :-) and thus companies don’t risk inventing new channels. This is probably an ignorant rant (Eg a good counter argument would simply be - “email is popular because it works!”). Given the number of emails I get, I do wish more companies tried more creative techniques to grab attention. (The Snapchat vending machine for spectacles comes to mind as a good attempt at innovation. I must confess I have zero knowledge of how the numbers on that approach worked) In ecommerce, companies like brandless are doing well at getting attention without playing the standard email game (standard email game = ‘buy lists—>optimize—>$’ -> repeat). Having said this, the advice in this article is very sensible - if someone comes to your site and didn’t complete the purchase, it doesn’t hurt to ask again. I am just raising a caution against taking email marketing for granted - esp if an entrepreneur is just starting out - presumably she can take some risk and try innovative ways of grabbing attention, than just email.
- deveshkhanal 9y ago
  "This is probably an ignorant rant" Correct. I researched the engagement numbers: http://growthrock.co/social-media-statistics/ http://growthrock.co/social-media-statistics/ HN folks always hate on email, but compared to other channels (social in particular) the engagement is insane. Insane. 15% quoted by the guy in a thread above for example is unheard of on Twitter/FB. And compared to paid social/paid search it's SO much cheaper once the list is built.

paxy 9y ago

How do you know whether users have opened an email or not? Or do you mean interacted with the email (i.e. clicked a link)?

snowwrestler 9y ago
Unless they're base64-encoded, images in emails must load off a web server. By customizing the image URLs per recipient, the system serving those images can tell who saw the email. It's not perfect because: - Some preview functions load images, even if the email was not actually opened, and - Some email clients block images from loading by default, so it's possible for the user to open and read the text of the email without triggering an "open" signal. Clicks are much more reliable signals of intent, but there's far fewer of them.
cjblomqvist 9y ago
You can quite easily setup tracking, eg using Google Analytics
stevewilhelm 9y ago
Mixpanel for example, provides a mechanism [1]. [1] https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004690106-How-can-I-track-email-open-rates- https://help.mixpanel.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004690106-How...

paulie_a 9y ago

Do you track open rates that result in clicking unsubscribe? I open a lot of email just to click that link

vamin 9y ago
It's not generally a significant effect, unsubscribe rates tend to be well under 1%. Most people just ignore emails they don't want.
- SteveGerencser 9y ago
  This. The unsub rates I see tend to be measured in tenths of a percent or less.
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    I'd be curious in someone running an experiment that involved the unsubscribe link displayed as prominent as the marketing message.
    - patio11 9y ago
      N = 1, but I used to put it in the second sentence of my emails. The unsubscribe rate was still measured in basis points, although I had an unusually high quality list relative to e.g. most e-commerce shops.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  Don't forget the people that abuse the "mark as spam"-button as unsubscribe link. I saw that beahvior with non-techy users - it's often easier to find than the unsubscribe link and has the same effect to them.
mlevental 9y ago
i wish devs understood something: whatever pathological behavior you're participating in is just that: pathological. 99.99999999% of people just read emails and do nothing insidious/clever/nefarious. there are literally like 5 people like you and 100,000 people just reading the email and either clicking or not clicking, buying or not buying, etc.

a_d 9y ago

I will attempt to argue against email marketing as a channel for any startup (B2b or B2c). 1. Channel is extremely crowded. Everyone has read the same best-practices and optimization techniques. So emails from most companies (each one of them thinking that they are ‘differentiated) regress in quality and content to a mean. 2. Because it is so measurable (a marketer’s dream), this channel becomes less about what the emails say, but more about tricks to get one to open and click. 3. Excessive click optimization might erode “brand” (my conjecture). Since “brand” falls under the “soft stuff” in marketing, it gets attention as a second class citizen after one has taken care of the measurable stuff. (Defining brand as the ‘impression a word creates in your mind when you hear that word’) 4. Once a startup gives up on the ‘crutch’ of email - may be the team will think anew and innovate. Due to its measurability, my personal opinion is that companies don’t explore other channels - meaning, there isn’t a lot of invention going on. If one visited a random saas startup and saw a day in the life of their “email marketing team”, I bet they are all roughly doing the same thing and have the same goals. I fear that no one wants to lose out on the 1% out of 1 million attention that emails are able to get - consistently and repeatably - and are thus like a drug that one can’t get off of :-) and thus companies don’t risk inventing new channels. This is probably an ignorant rant (Eg a good counter argument would simply be - “email is popular because it works!”). Given the number of emails I get, I do wish more companies tried more creative techniques to grab attention. (The Snapchat vending machine for spectacles comes to mind as a good attempt at innovation. I must confess I have zero knowledge of how the numbers on that approach worked) In ecommerce, companies like brandless are doing well at getting attention without playing the standard email game (standard email game = ‘buy lists—>optimize—>$’ -> repeat). Having said this, the advice in this article is very sensible - if someone comes to your site and didn’t complete the purchase, it doesn’t hurt to ask again. I am just raising a caution against taking email marketing for granted - esp if an entrepreneur is just starting out - presumably she can take some risk and try innovative ways of grabbing attention, than just email.

deveshkhanal 9y ago
"This is probably an ignorant rant" Correct. I researched the engagement numbers: http://growthrock.co/social-media-statistics/ http://growthrock.co/social-media-statistics/ HN folks always hate on email, but compared to other channels (social in particular) the engagement is insane. Insane. 15% quoted by the guy in a thread above for example is unheard of on Twitter/FB. And compared to paid social/paid search it's SO much cheaper once the list is built.