Live data from Hacker News

How we boosted our marketing email open rate

catonmat.net

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: How we boosted our marketing email open rate

#21
post #10

I can't believe people are still sending email marketing. I report spam and unsubscribe on literally anything marketing related even from services I use and all my friends do this as well and have for nearly a decade.

When done right, it works.

It's the hubspot/marketo approach of slamming inboxes with daily/weekly, non-specific garbage that needs to go. And buying lists or using lists from conferences - fuck that, it's just spam.

Following up with someone who explicitly gave you permission to send them emails after signing up for your service is reasonable and expected IMO.

It's the only channel that isn't owned by a walled-garden, so investing in it and treating it with respect is essential since it's the only way to communicate to customers and potential-customers without a middle-man extracting rent.

Re: How we boosted our marketing email open rate

#22
post #10

I can't believe people are still sending email marketing. I report spam and unsubscribe on literally anything marketing related even from services I use and all my friends do this as well and have for nearly a decade.

Speaking as someone who often recovers a friend's laptop from near oblivion, you'll be surprised how much some people will click any link that is presented to them.

Re: How we boosted our marketing email open rate

#25
post #10

I can't believe people are still sending email marketing. I report spam and unsubscribe on literally anything marketing related even from services I use and all my friends do this as well and have for nearly a decade.

When done right, it works. It's the hubspot/marketo approach of slamming inboxes with daily/weekly, non-specific garbage that needs to go. And buying lists or using lists from conferences - fuck that, it's just spam. Following up with someone who explicitly gave you permission to send them emails after signing up for your service is reasonable and expected IMO. It's the only channel that isn't owned by a walled-garde…

Except that people don't actually want that, if they did, they would read it. They just got confused by the signup form and accidentally left the checkbox checked

Re: How we boosted our marketing email open rate

#27
post #3

Will suggest this to my manager, he loves seeing percentages very much. So much in fact that our OKR for next quarter is to boost our email open rate by 50%. That means from 1% to 1.5%.

If your open rate is that low, you probably should do a very thorough list cleansing. You're probably sending to many, many people who haven't opened your emails in years. You should stop sending to them, which will improve your metrics, in terms of spam filtering. I would also look at the open rates for new subscribers during their first month on the list -- these should be quite high. If not, then you have much dee…

But don't do the list cleaning all at once. Instead, do it a little bit every quarter, so you can constantly claim credit for improving email open rates by a moderate amount.

Re: How we boosted our marketing email open rate

#28
post #20
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is extremely on topic. If a company thinks "marketing email open rate" is a target, it has lost track of what marketing is. The point is to drive business to the company and that is what should be measured. If people click on your email but don't do any purchase they were already about to make, they are useless. If your spam also alienate your customers, stop what you're doing, no matter your open rate! I don't…

'I don't understand how so many companies let their marketing department get away with this.' Probably because their marketing people are highly skilled at marketing themselves.

It surely couldn't have anything to do with non-marketers overestimating their knowledge of marketing.

You wouldn't trust a marketer to give input on the job of computer programming. Why would you trust a programmer to give input on the job of marketing?

Re: How we boosted our marketing email open rate

#29
post #20
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is extremely on topic. If a company thinks "marketing email open rate" is a target, it has lost track of what marketing is. The point is to drive business to the company and that is what should be measured. If people click on your email but don't do any purchase they were already about to make, they are useless. If your spam also alienate your customers, stop what you're doing, no matter your open rate! I don't…

'I don't understand how so many companies let their marketing department get away with this.' Probably because their marketing people are highly skilled at marketing themselves.

or... because marketing works.

Something folks here are rare to ever admit. HN is populated with amazing people who see thru all facades and are completely incapable of ever being a 'victim' of advertising, because we all know better!

Re: How we boosted our marketing email open rate

#30
post #4

Another way you can probably increase the effectiveness of marketing emails is to send less of them. If you're sending daily emails or worse multiple emails a day, your emails are spam and people will start auto-deleting them. This trains the spam filter to identify them as spam which means you will probably be identified as spam for other users with the same email provider. If you're a clothing store, you can also i…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN