Episode 34: Boosting Open and Click Rates


Learn the three essentials for getting your emails opened and clicked on. Then we’ll talk about how to dissect your welcome sequence and newsletters to diagnose the problems.

Link to waitlist: https://lizwilcox.com/waitlist/

Link to Episode 33: Subject Line Best Practices: https://lizwilcox.com/episode-33-subject-line-best-practices/


Transcript​

     What’s up? Liz Wilcox here. You’re listening to episode 34 of the email sound booth podcast and I gotta tell you, uh, I just woke up. I had to record this, uh, if my voice sounds extra raspy or I, I’m a little nasally or whatever, uh, good morning. Okay, anyway, today we’re going to be talking about boosting your open and click rates and I’m putting these together.

Because they go together. Excuse me. Um, You know, when it comes to open and click rates, I try to increase these You know, each and every time, of course, I mean, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Um, and I know what you’re going to ask me, Liz, what is a good open rate? What is a good click rate? And I tell you what, I’m sitting up straight now because I’m not going to answer that.

There’s a, I don’t know, there’s no such thing. What’s good for you, right? If you’re just getting started. Please don’t compare yourself to someone else or if you’ve been in the game forever, but you know, you haven’t emailed consistently or, you know, it just feels like a slog. I don’t want you to compare anyone or I don’t want to compare yourself to anyone except yourself.

So look at your metrics, you know, today you’re likely not, you know, sitting at a computer right now, but today look at your metrics and just ask yourself, With the advice you’re about to get, how can I get 1 percent better? Right? I just want to increase that open rate by 1 percent in the next 30, 60, 90 days, whatever feels applicable to you.

So I don’t, I don’t think I’ve ever said applicable. I always say applicable. I don’t know why I said applicable all of a sudden, maybe because I’ve got this podcast mic and I’m like trying to be fancy. I don’t know. Is it applicable? Is it applicable? Uh, Email me and tell me what you say. Oh, actually put it in the email sound booth Facebook group.

Okay, that’s in the show notes. All right. So the point of that was just Get 1 percent better so here are The things in my outline that I wrote in all caps. These are the things that I really want you to know about your metrics about boosting that open and click rate. So number one, oh my gosh, email consistently, my friend, emailing consistently is key.

Because at the end of the day, to increase and get those like crazy awesome metrics, it’s more about the from line than anything else. Who is the email from? Am I going to open it? And do I trust that person enough that if they suggest I click on something, I do it? Okay, so you have to become this person in the inbox that your readers love.

And this might, oh my gosh, Liz, that’s so much pressure. No, babe, this is so friggin exciting. You know, when When I email you, do you get excited or do you, Oh, I wonder what Liz has to say today. And even if you’re listening to this podcast, right, you’ve likely subscribed and, you know, every morning around six or 7am, you know, you get a notification, new podcast, right?

And that’s because it’s from Liz Wilcox. It’s a specific show, the email sound booth that you want to listen to, that you find value in. Right? And that’s exciting. That’s a really cool relationship that you and I have. A side note, I don’t take it for granted. Thank you so much for listening. I feel so lucky.

Anyway, you’ve got to email consistently to become that person. The same way when I started this podcast, I did it daily because I wanted to be very consistent. I wanted to be in your ear just about every single day. I wanted. To be top of mind any time you have an email question you think about Liz and That’s why I decided to do the daily podcast right and I’m also right now doing daily emails You don’t have to do that.

You don’t have to do it daily emails, but you do have to be consistent There’s so many members inside EMM that say oh You know, how do I how do I you know I’ve, I’ve ghosted my list. How do I get it back? And, uh, well, I kind of email monthly, but you know, I haven’t done it in three months. It’s like, well then no.

And I say it with love. No, you don’t email monthly. You email, uh, you know, whenever your anxiety is not in hyperdrive apparently. Right. And that’s the whole point of the email cell booth. I don’t want your anxiety to go in a hyperdrive or send an email. But I do want you to be consistent, which is why I spent two minutes on this, because when you can be consistent and maybe this is a whole separate podcast episode, you can be standing out in the inbox, right?

You can be that, you know, I don’t look at the subject line. I look at the from line because, oh my gosh, Chris just emailed me or Joey just emailed me, right? Now, the second thing I want you to know, or ask yourself rather, is, is your lead magnet actually what people want or what is the, is that first step?

So in episode 35, I’m going to talk all about how to know if your lead magnet is the right lead magnet. But for now, I want you to just look at your lead magnet, and chances are it probably is. This isn’t to say, Oh my gosh, I need a new lead magnet. But are you attracting the right people with this lead magnet?

Which leads me to my third point. Are you getting people on your list that you actually, or that actually want to read your emails and click on your stuff? Uh, I forget which episode it was. Hang on, hang on. I know this is so annoying. Oh, episode 18, three ways to grow your email list. And one way to think twice about before using right in that episode.

I go into detail about how to grow your list with people that actually want to open your emails. Now, if you feel like you did this awesome list growth activity and you’ve got a bunch of people on your list, but suddenly your open rate or your click rate or maybe both has started to go down. Guess what?

However you grew that list was not the right way because those people don’t want to open your stuff, right? And we want, remember, we want people that look at the front line and go, yay, right? Uh, so look at the way you’re growing your list. For example, I grow my list with a lot of podcast interviews. And I know if I can be in your, um, your ear for 15, 20, even an hour, you know, even 60 minutes, and then you stop what you’re doing, cause I know you’re not sitting at your desk listening to this, taking your notes, right?

You stop what you’re doing, you sign up for my list, you’re someone who actually wants to be on the list that wants to learn more from me, right? Alright, uh, give me one sec, I’m going to take some water. Did I mention I just woke up? Alright, so again, we talked about boosting open and click rates, really asking yourself and being honest, you know, am I emailing consistently enough so that people recognize the from line, right, from me?

Is my lead magnet actually helping people? Is it actually that sort of first step in our journey? And am I getting people on my list that actually want to read my emails and click on my stuff? Alright. So let’s talk about open rates really quick. Hmm. If you want to boost your open rates, you’ve got to look at your welcome sequence.

What do I do? What does your welcome sequence look like? Do you have one? If you don’t have one, that’s a good place to start. And you know, in my membership, you get that welcome sequence, uh, for free, already written for you. Um, but anyway, look at your welcome sequence. Do the subject lines, are they, are they enticing?

Episode 33 gives you subject line, uh, best practices of this podcast. So, you know, listen to that podcast. and then look at your subject lines. Are they doing the things we talked about in episode 33? Also, in your subject, or I’m sorry, in your welcome sequence, are you sharing a little bit of personality?

And this is to help you with the from line. Are you sharing a little personality? Are you sharing the vision you have for your clients and students? Are you Are you sharing some values? Right? All of those things, if I jive with your personality, if I have the same shared vision for myself, and you know, I align with your values, yes, I have suddenly really been excited to open your emails.

Right? Unless, are you setting expectations? Are you telling your subscribers in the beginning, hey, I’m going to email you once a week. Hey, I’m going to send you tips on this and that. Hey, I’ve got free and paid products, right? So look at your welcome statements. Are you doing those things? Now look at the metrics.

Okay. So first we looked at the content. Now look at the metrics. Are you varying your subject lines? Again, go to episode 33. If you need help with that, you can also try to AB test your subject lines. Um, are you emailing consistently? Oh, I just totally skipped something. I’m sorry. I’m looking at my notes. I just woke up.

We’re looking at your metrics. Let me back up here. Should I edit this? I’m not going to. I just, I really want to get this content out to you because it’s so important. So now we’re looking at the metrics of your, um, welcome sequence. So when it comes to your welcome sequence, so actually I’m going to pull up mine here.

And my welcome sequence is 4 emails. And the first, we’re talking about open rates, so the first one is 84. 3%. The second one goes down to 69. 2, and then I’ve got two more that stay about in that range at 67 and 66. 2%. So again, I’ve got 84. 3, the very first email. The very first email you ever send out is going to have the highest open rate, pretty much, of your entire life.

Unless you send, you know, uh, a survey to your customers and that list is only three people, right? Then that might have 100%. But your, your open rate for your very first email is going to be the biggest, highest metric ever. So if that is, I would say if that is below 80%, you have got to do something about it.

Try a different subject line. Try a better way of Getting people on your list at 84.3 for me, that seems okay. I’d like it to be above 85%. Um, yeah, so then it, it drops down to 69.2, so that’s about a 15% drop. That’s pretty average. I’d like it to be a little higher. I’d like mine to be between 70 and 75%, but at 69, I feel.

pretty good about that. Okay. Um, and then it just drops down to 67, 66%. So I know the last email 66%. I can, I can feel like my newsletters are going to be within 10 percent of that range. So my newsletters should average about 55 to, you know, 65, 66%. And I know that’s kind of complicated. Let me say it again.

So if you look at your, uh, open rate for the last email in your welcome sequence, you can pretty much assume I’ve found this pattern. I haven’t seen this anywhere. This is just a pattern I’ve seen for myself in over three email lists. My open rate for my newsletters is going to be within 10 percent of my average open rate for my last email in my welcome sequence.

So again, my last email in my welcome sequence is 66. 2. I can justifiably assume my newsletters are going to be between, you know, 56 and 66 percent based on that. And that’s probably because, you know, if you made it to the last email and you’re still opening in my welcome sequence, You know, those questions we asked at the beginning, you know, I, I do have the right people on my list.

I do, uh, you know, have the correct elite magnet. People are, you know, I am doing all the right things to ensure that, uh, you know, the from line is the most important line, right? They see Liz Wilcox, they wanna open. So these are pretty decent open rates. Hmm. for me. I’ve been at this for a while. Don’t compare yourself to me, but do look at it, right?

So if I wanted to get this first email, 84. 3%, if I wanted to get that higher, I might try a different subject line. I might try a different, uh, tactic for getting email subscribers. Um, you know, I might try a different preview text, stuff like that. Okay. So look at those. If you don’t like the way that they are, you know, do something about it.

How can you, even if there’s, so let’s say, uh, you know, I, first email is 84. 3%, right? The second email is 69. 2%. If I wanted to get that to 75, maybe there’s something I need to do in the first email, like say, you know, P. S., don’t forget to open tomorrow’s email. it’s really important. That might boost it, right?

So making sure there’s something enticing in every email to open up the next one.

Okay, now let’s look at your newsletters, right? We just looked over your welcome sequence, and this is where I was jumping ahead and it didn’t make any sense a couple seconds ago. Uh, look at your newsletters. Are you varying your subject lines? Remember, you can go to episode 33, uh, to talk and learn all about subject lines and, you know, how to vary them.

Um, also you can try to A B test your subject lines, right? If you are someone who says, well, Liz, I don’t know, am I varying my subject lines? Uh, how do I even do that? You can test, right? You can say, Oh, well, I’m stuck between these two subject lines. I don’t know which one’s going to perform better. A B test, right?

Also, And again, this one is the tough one. Are you actually emailing consistently? And then also you could email more. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but emailing more will likely increase your open rate. Why? Because it’s more about the from line, right? If you can become that person where I don’t even look at the subject line, I look at the from line, I see your name, I open it, right?

And. In order to do that, I’ve shared this many times, uh, if you’ve been around the block with me for a while, um, you know, showing that you are invested in your readers, showing that you are relatable with your readers, right? How do you do that? You have to email them. You have to tell them you’re invested.

You have to show how relatable you are. And the more you email, the more you, the more opportunity you have to do that. So again, I’m not saying you have to email daily, but if you’re emailing once a week And you have something in the middle of the week like oh, I forgot to tell them that That’s a great subject line forgot to tell you and then put the extra stuff in there, right?

Don’t wait till next week Now look at your newsletters. And is there any newsletter that Has higher metrics, right? Like it’s it’s It’s clearly, you know, this one performed really well compared to the others. Like it’s got one, two, three, 10 percent more open rate. How? Look at it. Analyze it, right? How did it, did that happen?

Why did that happen? Analyze it and duplicate it. Um, you could also try a different time of day, right? Um, and this is going to be a, for a future podcast episode. In general, you know, you want to send around the same time of day every single week, um, but if your open rate becomes stagnant, you might try a different time of day or a different day of the week.

This is, you know, breaking the pattern. You want to do something different than the norm, right? Uh, you want to stand out in the inbox, Oh, uh, you know, JC, he normally emails me on Tuesdays, but today’s Thursday. I wonder why he’s emailing. I’m going to open it. Right? That’s curiosity. Right? It breaks the pattern.

And then for the love of all that is holy, get new people on your list after you update that welcome sequence, after you analyze your newsletters. Um, you’ve always got to be growing your list. Uh, especially, you know, now you’re looking at your welcome sequence, you’re looking at your newsletters. You’re adjusting things.

Get new people on the list. Okay? Oh, and something I didn’t write down. Scrub your list. We talked about this in episode 17. Go back to it if you don’t know what that is. Basically, you gotta delete those subscribers that aren’t opening. So, please, scrub your list. That’s gonna boost your open and click rates like crazy.

So now, uh, that we’re 20 minutes in, let me go to the click rates. So again, we’re going to look at the welcome sequence first. Are you giving them something to click on in every single email? We’ve got to, for lack of a better term, we’ve got to train people to click on our emails, or to know that they’re going to open and they’re going to have something to click on.

So in your welcome sequence, if you have that lead magnet, make sure in that first email when you’re delivering the lead magnet, Put the lead magnet twice. You know, make it a button or a hyperlink. Make sure your hyperlinks are not just this itty bitty, you know, click here. Hyperlink the whole sentence.

Hyperlinks should be long. You know, don’t make them a whole paragraph, that’s weird. But a whole sentence is totally fine. Do not make your hyperlinks small. And use buttons if you want to use buttons. Uh, so also in your welcome sequence are people replying to you and I know It seems like we’re talking about opens and clicks lives not replies But if people will reply to you, they will click this is about opening up a conversation, right?

It’s about that from line getting them to you know, see your name and want to open it One of the best ways to do that is to get replies. So in your welcome sequence And we go in January. We’re doing a welcome sequence workshop. So if you don’t have time to do all of this right now, don’t worry. In January, all annual pass holders will be getting this workshop for free.

So if you know you need that, get go to Liz Wilcox dot com slash wait list. You can get on the wait list for the annual pass. So you can come to this welcome sequence workshop for free. Anyway. Make sure in, you know, the first, second, third, fourth email you’re sending, ask for replies. And this is where, uh, you know, instead of asking just for general replies, ask for very simple yes or no questions.

This will help you actually get replies, which will help you actually get more opens, which will help you actually get more clicks, okay? And make your emails count. Write with the reader in mind. Look at that welcome sequence. Is this about you or is this about your reader? Make sure it’s about the reader.

Make sure the links you’re giving them, you know, you’re sharing some of your best content. You’re sharing some of your offers. Get them clicking on stuff, okay? And now let’s look at your newsletters, right? Uh, vary how many links you have in your emails. I hate the one email, one job rule. Like, what if you sent me three emails in a row where the one job you asked me to do is not what I want to do?

So, you know, variety is the spice of life, baby. Give me a couple links. Um, of course if you’re selling something, one link, right? But if you, if the purpose is just to boost the click rate, that’s great. Send me a few different links. Actually, let’s just go straight inside email marketing membership Again, if you’re not a member go to Liz Wilcox.

com slash waitlist. It’s in the show notes I’m opening up a steal of a deal November 25th. But anyway, let’s look at some of these clicker I just want to give you some ideas You could do a quick listicle. The newsletter is all about pattern interrupt You Break up the monotony of the inbox, the one email, one job rule and have a little fun.

So, you know, put a listicle together where you’ve got three to five things to click on. Um, you could do a content, a content roundup, which is something similar, but you’re going to share three pieces of content that are related to your industry. The point is to get people to click on at least one, right?

You could also share with your audience a separate newsletter. Um, give them something extremely generous, like a discount or access to something really special for free. That’s going to get them to click, right? You might think, I don’t want to give away something for free. Well, if your click rate is super low, It’s hard to sell in the first place, so just give it away.

It will boost the click rate, okay? You could also just send an email that’s really short and sweet, follow me on social media, and you could put the one social media channel you want people to follow you on, right? Uh, you could also share your favorite tool, a useful app, or a useful tool you use, and then get the heck out of there, okay?

Don’t make that email long. Just say, hey, this is my favorite tool. You know, give one, two, maybe three reasons why. Again, super short, in bullet form would be best. And then get them to click. Remember, the point is to get them to click. Okay? Alright, those are some ideas just straight from EMM. Okay. Those are the tips for boosting your open and click rate.

I hope this helps. Remember, there’s no such thing as a standard rate. Just try to increase what you’ve got going on right now. Half a percent, a percent at a time. Okay, start with looking at that welcome sequence. Then be crazy consistent with your newsletters. Add a little variety. So people, you know, so you stand out in the inbox.

And then. Well, you know, just create a valuable experience. Keep your reader in mind. What did they want to read so that they’ll open your emails over and over because you’re delivering them what they actually want. Okay. All right. I’m Liz Wilcox. This has been fun. You are so awesome. Let me know in the reviews of this podcast today.

if this episode helped. I’ll see you on the next episode of Email Soundbooth. Oh, and don’t forget the annual pass where you can join my membership for an entire year and get access to all my other products for free. That’s coming out November 25th to the 29th. You want to get on that wait list. This has not been open for a year.

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