My numbers prove it
You’ve heard it many times – no one reads emails any more.
That’s a bold-faced lie.
Or at least it’s misinformation.
I’ll explain why.
You hear about low open rates all the time.
Mailchimp says that the open rate for emails across all industries is 22%. Now, if your open rate was 22%, you might think that 78% of your audience was not reading your emails. Asleep at the wheel. Never paying attention to your helpful missives.
Not true.
If only 22% of your subscribers are opening your emails on the average, some of the other 78% are opening your emails every now and then.
Let me explain.
If you send out an email on Monday to your list of home care clients, and 22% open them, and another a week later 22% open them – these emails are not being opened by exactly the same group of people.
Let’s say that with a list of 100 subscribers, 15 of the 22 opened both emails. But seven more opened the first email, and seven different subscribers opened the second. So, 29 opened at least one email (15 plus 14).
You would say then that 29% of your list is active. That’s more than 22%.
What if you send out five emails and calculate how many opened at least one of them?
The engagement rate gets bigger the more emails you send.
Let’s say that one of your subscribers – we’ll call him Jack Smith – opens your first email about caregiver burnout. But next week’s email is about what to look for in choosing a home care agency. He does not open that email.
Different subjects, different audiences.
Or maybe some of your subscribers were too busy the first week. But the second week they were not.
What our list shows
Let’s look at the numbers for one of our own lists here at Savvy Senior Marketing.
Here are the open rates of our six most recent emails. These were sent to either the full list, or to the most engaged 85% of our list:
Email open rates
38% – Teen Driving and Caregiving
25% – How we found 7 caregivers in 5 days
49% – Labor Day and my youthful compromise
25% – The mortgage banker was stumped
28% – When my caregiver recruitment plan won’t work
29% – The snags and snafus of a PDF flyer design
—–
32% – Average open rate of six emails
(I might add that 32% is not too shabby when the industry rate for marketing is only 17%, according to Mailchimp.)
And yet Mailchimp tells me that my engagement rate is 85%.
I’ll explain.
Mailchimp rates its subscribers on a five-star system between one and five stars, with five being the highest. Rating is assigned according to the email open rate, as well as the “click rate,” which is the number of clicks on links inside the email. There other minor factors to the algorithm as well that are not important for now.
Among subscribers, those who are rated three stars and above are what Mailchimp calls “engaged” subscribers. Those at the bottom of the barrel – with one or two stars – aren’t opening any emails right now. (Or they just joined the list and haven’t yet earned more stars.)
We can say that the three, four and even some five-star subscribers open emails every now and then.
The three-star subscribers are only mildly interested. They might be opening fewer than 10% of our emails. But they are nevertheless engaged, according to Mailchimp.
Let’s say that the open rate for our four-star subscriber, Jack Smith, is only 20%. Thus, Jack opens only one out of five emails on the average. If I send out one email each week, John opens one email every five weeks, on the average.
That’s not bad.
Jack is not a guy bickering about all the emails he’s getting from me and sending my emails to the spam folder.
Jack is listening to me. He’s not lost in the digital cyberspace, swimming in the internet ocean, having forgotten about us.
So, every five weeks Jack gets informed about my message, and gets inspired with something he deems important. And he knows that I’m interested in him.
And even when he doesn’t open my emails, he sees my name and subject line calling out to him like a siren’s song.
Jack is among the 85% of my list who are engaged in some way.
That’s why the numbers you hear touted about email is so much misinformation.
Your home care email list
Based on what I’ve just demonstrated, if you are sending out emails regularly, you are connecting more with your public than you think.
Of course, some names go dormant. You must prune your list every now and then of those who seldom or never open your emails. You must also keep adding to the sales funnel – add new names to the list to make up for the lost sheep.
And you must write engaging, informative and interesting emails.
Can you do all of this?
We can help.
We’ve gotten new clients from our list by sending numerous emails. They sometimes call us and do business with us without us even having to call them.
Maybe you will be the next one to contact us to write a series of emails that strengthens your brand and leads to new clients for you.
Your home care list can have the same success as ours. You can have engagement that’s higher than all the nay-sayers.
Your list might get an even better response rate than ours here at Savvy Senior Marketing, since these are your clients and caregivers. Prospects should be part of your list as well of course.
Email is a great way to keep in touch with your public. Don’t pay attention to the doomsdayers. Why not let us at Savvy Senior Marketing help you reach your audience with an effective email campaign?
Why not use this marketing method to bring in more clients and customers? Get in touch with us at Savvy Senior Marketing by making an appointment for a free 20-minute phone consult, or by sending us an email.
