You want more subscribers right? The thinking is this: "If I send to more people, I'll have more sales." Yes? But what about the open rate? How many people are reading your current emails?
The problem is there are two parts to the basic equation. The number you send and the action rate - the percentage of people who actually do something from the email.
Most marketers assume the only thing they can change is the number of subscribers, when in fact they have considerable control over the action rate. Simply by sending highly relevant emails they can dramatically improve the percentage of subscribers that do what they want (buy a book, come to a restaurant, donate online,...)
Subscriber Lists Have Width
Yep. Not only should you be interested in acquiring more subscribers, you should be just as interested in acquiring more data about the subscribers you already have.
Why?
- Email marketing is about having a conversation with people. Unless you know something about those people, how can you have a conversation with them?
- Without data about your subscribers you cannot send relevant emails and will almost certainly have gradually deteriorating open rates. In other words, your effective list size will shrink over time.
Effective List Size
Let's say you have 1000 subscribers. Your effective list size is much smaller. Do you know how many of your subscribers have read at least one of your last 3 emails?
How many of your subscribers never read your emails?
For most email marketers, the effective list size is at least 30% less than the number of subscribers in the list. And, this will only get worse if you fail to send highly relevant emails.
Effective list size is what matters. Sending 5,000 emails and having only 20 people click a link is not doing you any good. It costs more money, you are tarnishing your brand, and you are losing out on the opportunity email marketing offers.
Virtuous Cycle of More Subscriber Attributes
The more you know about your subscribers...
The more targeted and relevant your emails are, which leads to...
Less unsubscribes, less list churn, higher open rates, higher click through rates, which means...
Your effective list size is bigger. You have more click-throughs. You have more sales. Your subscribers are happy. You are happy. AND...
With more clicks, and more sales, and more interaction you have more data, which helps you...
Know more about your customers. And the cycle continues.
