How to Rate a Bulk Email Campaign

How to Rate a Bulk Email Campaign:

I created the following chart to help you better understand how you need to gauge the success of your emailing campaign. It is important to realize that when you send a bulk email campaign, that your reaching an audience that has never received prior correspondence from you. This means your open ratio's are going to be dramatically lower than what they would be if you were emailing to a "relationship" based list (which is a list that directly opted into your website to receive email from you). Relationship based "opt-in" email lists generally have an open ratio between 30-60% and nearly zero SPAM complaints.

Since bulk email lists and purchased lists (where the prospect did not directly "Opt-Into" your specific website) generally have an overall lower open ratio, I have given examples below of how you would best judge the successes of any bulk email campaign. I judge the effectiveness of a campaign based on the amount of emails that are opened and by the click-through ratios of the emails intended recipients (These examples are based on my two years experience of emailing nearly 3 Billion people in nearly 10,000 bulk email campaigns).

Examples:

2%+ Open Ratio: If you receive an open ratio of more than 2%, then I consider that you've had a VERY VERY successful email campaign. This means your subject lines for the email were near perfect and caused the supreme level of desired effect you would wish to have in a bulk emailing. Getting a 2% open ratio in bulk emailing is usually a rare event and doesn't happen to often. Only about 5% or less of any campaigns will ever get this level of response.

1% Open Ratio: I consider that you've had a very excellent emailing campaign. I consider a 1% open ratio to be the ideal bench mark of success in any bulk emailing campaign. This means you have a great overall subject line and have your finger on the pulse of your audience.

.5% and above: Good overall campaign. It is typical that 75% of all email campaigns will usually end up between a .5 and a 1% open ratio. This means you're making a good connection with your audience and you have not turned them away. With some changes to your subject line, you may hopefully find yourself at the 1% open ratio mark and above.

.1 to .5% Open Ratio: Poor performance campaign. I would recommend that you immediately change your subject lines to make a better connection to your target audience. I would also check your spam settings to make sure you do not have too many red flags in your message. Either you received this open open ratio because your audience doesn't care about your subject line or your emailing on Saturday or Sunday (which are the worst days to send out bulk email). If you happened to send out a campaign on the weekend, why don't you try again on Monday and see if you get the same result. If on Monday you see the same figures, then I would immediately change your subject lines.

Other factors: As we evaluate your campaigns performance, I will be looking for three overall factors:

1. If the email has a great open ratio (lets say around 1% open) but has a very low click-through ratio, then there is nothing wrong with the subject line but the content of your email probably needs to be changed to give your audience a better way of going to your website to receive your offer.

2. If the email has a great click-through ratio but has a low open ratio, then we know your e-mail’s body content is great it is just the subject line that needs to be changed. This is an ideal problem to have because we know the body of the email is working great and changing a subject line is allot easier than changing the emails content.

3. If your email campaign is getting both great open and click-through ratio's but you call us complaining that no one is either opting into your website or your making sales, then you have a website issue and not an email issue. I would suggest you make whatever changes are needed to your website to adapt to the desires of your target audience. Remember that you are trying to do two primary things: Create Desire from your audience and Establish Trust. If your getting good numbers on your emails but no results then you need to take a hard look at what it is your selling and how your selling it (also whether your offering is even in demand on the Internet). I personally think that about thirty percent of our clientele's issues with emailing is that they have services no one wants to buy online (I.E. people don't want to buy a golf ball online).

THE PERFECT EMAIL

I define the perfect email as one where you are able to connect to your core target audience in less than 3-5 seconds. That within that time frame, your audience has a reasonable understanding of everything your trying to offer them. This is important because you need to realize that the people on the Internet have VERY VERY short attention spans. They are connected to virtually all the human knowledge they can get their hands on and you need to convince them in 3 second period that what you have to offer directly lines up with a major desire or present need they may have. *Remember to let your website be your "Infomercial" to establish their trust. Anyway, below is a prime example of an email we would send out for a bulk email campaign:

________________________________________________________________

Subject Line: New Loan Officer Email Database

Body Content:

If you're looking for the most comprehensive list of loan officer and mortgage broker email addresses, then you need to come visit us today at http://www.globalmailers.net

We have the Largest Email Database of Loan Officers and cost hundreds less than our competition.

Visit us today at http://www.globalmailers.net

Only $27 for our Entire Database of 750,000 email records!

See you There.

Sincerely,

Mark ED.

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This email reflects in my opinion, the simplest approach to drive interested traffic to our site. We get the message across without getting the client lost in the message.