Yes, I meant what I wrote in the subject line. I’m not joking.
Do you know how people often post a tweet like:
“Unpopular opinion: [insert a popular opinion]”
Yeah, this isn’t one of those. This is by far one of the most unpopular opinions I’ve ever expressed.
And I’ve been getting attacked for it every single time that I said it.
But you know me. So you’ll know that 1) it doesn’t bother me. I’ll stick to my beliefs and I’m not afraid to get attacked. Neither am I afraid if people will unfollow me for it. If you can’t handle different perspectives, that’s one you.
You'll also know 2) I don’t say stupid shit without thinking about it. I’m here to inform, explain, and entertain.
So let me explain why I say tracking email open rates is a waste of time. Or at least mostly.
First of all, the biggest factor: You’re not in business to get your emails opened, are you? You’re in business to make money. And don’t try to be humble and say you just want to help people. We’re all in it for the money. It doesn’t mean you can’t do good. But we’re still here for the money.
So what does that tell you? Well if you had to choose between making $100 per email while having a 50% open rate or making $1,000 per email but having an open rate of 12%, which one would you choose?
Right. The second one, of course. No doubt about it.
That tells us we’re optimizing for sales, not for opens. Which is a big and important distinction to make.
“But Alex, if you increase your open rate from 12% to 50%, wouldn’t you make more money?” In theory yes, in practice no.
This is something I first learned from email marketer John Bejakovic who shared his odd discovery that all his emails with the highest profits had the lowest open rates. A discovery I share as well.
Why does this happen? Well who knows? There are (and could be) multiple reasons.
One of the most logical explanations has to do with the subject line. If a subject line is highly specific, then less people will open your emails. But the people who do will be better-qualified buyers, and thus earning you more money.
On the other hand. It’s not just all about money > open rates.
Open rates themselves are flawed. Over the years many ESPs have taken different privacy actions to protect their users. This means that the methods used to track if people opened your emails aren’t working anymore.
How do you even know if people opened your email in the first place? Well, that’s done through embedded images.
Whenever I send an email, my ESP (Beehiiv) embeds a tiny image, just one single pixel. If you open the email, you’ll automatically send a request to download that image.
But here’s the thing. A lot of people have images disabled. Aka, you can’t track them. And here’s the new change. Google, outlook, and many others intercept these images and alter them before showing them to you in your inbox. Also disabling the tracker that’s embedded.
So yeah. You can’t trust email open rates. And you shouldn’t take drastic measures regarding them.
But there’s something else you can trust. Those are the fundamentals of email marketing. Learning how to write quick and easy emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading everyday. No longer do you have to follow rules and metrics made up by people who know nothing about email. Just do you, write engaging emails, and get paid.
Interested? Learn more about how to do so here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME