5 ms·

Yes, they work and people do actually check their emails. Even if you have a 20-30% click rate, that's 30% of people that may read your headline, click through

by meibo 4y ago

Yes, they work and people do actually check their emails. Even if you have a 20-30% click rate, that's 30% of people that may read your headline, click through to your blog post, product announcement, etc. If you're smart about your strategy (don't spam, think twice about when to send a mail, lead with interesting content, visually appealing), a mailing list can be a huge asset to any business. People tend to not want to follow companies on Twitter or Instagram, if they want to stay up to date, a lot of them might want news in their easily filterable inbox, in my experience.

eli 4y ago
Your example click rate is about an order of magnitude higher than the average.
- brk 4y ago
  I think it depends on the content and audience. I routinely get open rates in the mid 20% range when I send out a newsletter email.
  - nonameiguess 4y ago
    Selecting an email to delete it in the Apple mail.app also opens it. Doesn't mean I'm actually reading it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- chudi 4y ago
  I thing that the average is for generic marketing campaigns, At my work we have between 5-15 ctr on emails, just because the content is noteworthy
MrDunham 4y ago
> People tend to not want to follow companies Also many companies got burned thinking the smorgasbord of free traffic on social platforms would never end. It turns out that when your primary business model is selling traffic (via ads), giving it away for free is antithetical to your margins. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok (sometime soon) started off giving creators (and businesses) tons of free traffic only to eventually suppress it to push people towards paying to reach the followers they worked so hard to get. On the other hand, once someone has given you permission to email them then it really doesn’t matter if you do it from your own mailserver, mailchimp, or anything else… They are still expecting you to be in their inbox (hopefully delivering great value). Source: I was reading the internal newsletter in the bathroom of a major social network's office ~6 years ago when they were announcing (in celebration) that they had suppressed organic reach to sub 5%
- bdlowery 4y ago
  Following a giant company on social media is pointless. A large majority of their posts are dumb memes, or clever ways to be funny. It’s never anything of substance.
  - MrDunham 4y ago
    I wonder if that's (algorithmic) selection bias? IE you only see dumb memes or clever ways to be funny because they are the only thing that garner enough likes to break through the newsfeed noise? Or if companies just found out that their interesting-but-not-high-valence posts end up not going anywhere... so they create dumb memes or clever ways to be funny. Either way though we're caught in a death spiral of algorithmic selection and self-selection leaving us with drivel - making us less likely to follow companies and companies increasingly less willing to invest in quality content or content creators. Then round and round it goes.
PaulHoule 4y ago
Most businesses I’ve bought things from online (notably not Amazon) want to send me at least one email a day and it is more than I can keep up with. In the beginning for instance I would get emails from Best Buy that often had good offers, but at some point it got like ArsTechnica’s dealmaster and the offers became insipid. Even if the offers were compelling I couldn’t buy something every day.
blowski 4y ago
Normally, click rates are more like 0.1%. But it's also about brand recall. Having someone's email address lets you put an ad (subject line) in front of them for almost free, as often as you want, without having to go through the algorithms of the social networks.
- franze 4y ago
  Managed and initialized a few newsletters. With CTR >40%. It's all about value and expectation. i.e.: If you send out a vegan recipe every sunday to people who have subscribed to get vegan recipes on sunday - and you constantly deliver reoccurring value to these users, it works like a charm. From all traffic channels Newsletters are my most favorite ones.
  - blowski 4y ago
    For boutique newsletters in small niches, sure, you can see much higher click-through rates. But if you're New York Times, Walmart, AllRecipes - you're sending a daily email to > 10 million uniques, and your click-through rates will be < 0.1%.
    - jeromegv 4y ago
      How would you know? Have you seen their data? It’s closer to at least 1% for most ecommerce sites. It’s not just for small niche that newsletter works. It’s often considered the most reliable marketing tool (and cheap!), year after year after year.
      - blowski 4y ago
        > Have you seen their data? Yes, for similar sized brands and types of campaign. I worked for quite some time in email marketing for blue chips.
- jasode 4y ago
  >Normally, click rates are more like 0.1%. Some email campaign stats from Mailchimp (which may be self-serving but does match other numbers I've seen) ... says "open rate" is about 20% - 30% and "click-through-rate" (of a link embedded within the email) is about 2% - 5% : https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/ https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/ If people are not tricked into email newsletter signups via dark patterns (e.g. a default check box on an ecommerce shopping checkout), a lot of readers do actively open and click on emails they voluntarily signed up for. In such cases, click rates will realistically be much higher than 0.1%.

by meibo 4y ago

eli 4y ago

Your example click rate is about an order of magnitude higher than the average.

brk 4y ago
I think it depends on the content and audience. I routinely get open rates in the mid 20% range when I send out a newsletter email.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  Selecting an email to delete it in the Apple mail.app also opens it. Doesn't mean I'm actually reading it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
chudi 4y ago
I thing that the average is for generic marketing campaigns, At my work we have between 5-15 ctr on emails, just because the content is noteworthy

MrDunham 4y ago

> People tend to not want to follow companies Also many companies got burned thinking the smorgasbord of free traffic on social platforms would never end. It turns out that when your primary business model is selling traffic (via ads), giving it away for free is antithetical to your margins. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok (sometime soon) started off giving creators (and businesses) tons of free traffic only to eventually suppress it to push people towards paying to reach the followers they worked so hard to get. On the other hand, once someone has given you permission to email them then it really doesn’t matter if you do it from your own mailserver, mailchimp, or anything else… They are still expecting you to be in their inbox (hopefully delivering great value). Source: I was reading the internal newsletter in the bathroom of a major social network's office ~6 years ago when they were announcing (in celebration) that they had suppressed organic reach to sub 5%

bdlowery 4y ago
Following a giant company on social media is pointless. A large majority of their posts are dumb memes, or clever ways to be funny. It’s never anything of substance.
- MrDunham 4y ago
  I wonder if that's (algorithmic) selection bias? IE you only see dumb memes or clever ways to be funny because they are the only thing that garner enough likes to break through the newsfeed noise? Or if companies just found out that their interesting-but-not-high-valence posts end up not going anywhere... so they create dumb memes or clever ways to be funny. Either way though we're caught in a death spiral of algorithmic selection and self-selection leaving us with drivel - making us less likely to follow companies and companies increasingly less willing to invest in quality content or content creators. Then round and round it goes.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Most businesses I’ve bought things from online (notably not Amazon) want to send me at least one email a day and it is more than I can keep up with. In the beginning for instance I would get emails from Best Buy that often had good offers, but at some point it got like ArsTechnica’s dealmaster and the offers became insipid. Even if the offers were compelling I couldn’t buy something every day.

blowski 4y ago

Normally, click rates are more like 0.1%. But it's also about brand recall. Having someone's email address lets you put an ad (subject line) in front of them for almost free, as often as you want, without having to go through the algorithms of the social networks.

franze 4y ago
Managed and initialized a few newsletters. With CTR >40%. It's all about value and expectation. i.e.: If you send out a vegan recipe every sunday to people who have subscribed to get vegan recipes on sunday - and you constantly deliver reoccurring value to these users, it works like a charm. From all traffic channels Newsletters are my most favorite ones.
- blowski 4y ago
  For boutique newsletters in small niches, sure, you can see much higher click-through rates. But if you're New York Times, Walmart, AllRecipes - you're sending a daily email to > 10 million uniques, and your click-through rates will be < 0.1%.
  - jeromegv 4y ago
    How would you know? Have you seen their data? It’s closer to at least 1% for most ecommerce sites. It’s not just for small niche that newsletter works. It’s often considered the most reliable marketing tool (and cheap!), year after year after year.
    - blowski 4y ago
      > Have you seen their data? Yes, for similar sized brands and types of campaign. I worked for quite some time in email marketing for blue chips.
jasode 4y ago
>Normally, click rates are more like 0.1%. Some email campaign stats from Mailchimp (which may be self-serving but does match other numbers I've seen) ... says "open rate" is about 20% - 30% and "click-through-rate" (of a link embedded within the email) is about 2% - 5% : https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/ https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/ If people are not tricked into email newsletter signups via dark patterns (e.g. a default check box on an ecommerce shopping checkout), a lot of readers do actively open and click on emails they voluntarily signed up for. In such cases, click rates will realistically be much higher than 0.1%.