I'm an email marketing agency founder who shares what's learning right now from sending over 10 million emails a year (not writing ten million emails, mind. Imagine that 😂).
📧 First-world (email marketing) problems
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Trivia: What do you think the average B2B email marketing open rate is? A - 10% B - 15% C - 25% Answer in the P.S. Mornin' Reader, November last year: picture me sat at my desk with puppy dog eyes, feeling sorry for myself because I'd been knocked back for finance on an Audi Q4 E-tron Sportback. The world's tiniest violin screeching away in the background. What a drip 😂 Thankfully, I quickly realised how f*cking ridiculous I was being. To make myself feel better, I went down the good old self-deprecating route - basing one of the fake advert characters in my podcast: 'Peter the first-world problem counsellor' on myself. "What's this got to do with email marketing!?" I hear nobody cry, but it makes a nice segue in my email... Well, Reader, I'm glad you asked. Building an email list can be hard. When you've got 200 or so subs, you think 'if only I had 2,000! Then I'd make loads of sales with email.' But I'll let you in on a secret: I've never met anyone who is 'happy' with the size of their list.
Subscribers = first-world email problems. When you don't have them, you think subscribers are the key - but they're not. Subscribers do not automatically = sales (without knowing what you're doing). It's actually worse when you have a 'big' list. You know there are (probably) sales 💰 inside the list somewhere, you just can't work out how to move those sales from the list into your bank. So yeah. Lack of subscribers is rarely the problem. Knowing what to 'do' with them is. Which is something I'm gonna help with, over the course of the next few weeks. Questions? Reply. Cheers, Alex P.S. Here's the answer to our trivia question - The average B2B open rate is... 🥁 15.1% - according to this report. I'd personally be f*cking wounded if ANY of my clients had a 15% open rate. Some of my clients emails are as high as 80% (though I doubt this figure is actually true - open rate reporting is a bit dodgy). But yeah - 15% is very low, in my books. |
Alex Thompson
I'm an email marketing agency founder who shares what's learning right now from sending over 10 million emails a year (not writing ten million emails, mind. Imagine that 😂).
There's a slim chance you noticed. And an even slimmer chance you care. But I've been a crap email marketer and not emailed YOU – the lovely people on my list – for AGES. There's actually a big chance you've forgotten who I am. You might be reading this email with a frown on your face thinking: "Who TF is this guy? I didn't sign up to this list!! SPAMMER!" Well... Reader... you did sign up. At some point. I promise. I don't buy data/lists. Anyway, that's besides the point. You're here. And...
Are we scared to make jokes these days? I forgot to grab a basket. Again. So carrying ten bottles of deodorant across the supermarket to the cashier had been a mission in itself (I kept dropping them. An old lady even picked one up for me as I had them cradled in my arms - not my finest hour). But it was 50% off the only deodorant that keeps me smelling fresh(ish) all day, so I wasn't giving my savings up for the sake of some Pensioner's spine. (Okay - I admit. Even I felt a little bad...
Brackets (or parenthesis, if you're posh) are a good way to get more personality into your emails, but only if you use them properly . In this short email, you'll learn how. Mornin' Reader, Have you ever watched the Director's Commentary version of a film? Yeah, me neither. What I'm told happens is, the film plays while the director talks about their experience of making the film etc. And that's the best way to use brackets (or parenthesis, again, if you're posh) in emails. Brackets give the...