NEWSLETTER: THE RIGHT NUMBERS!
Even before starting to talk about why you should regularly send a newsletter and how to best optimise it, I think it is important to understand what sort of result you should expect. As we know newsletter are the most effective on-line tool to drive repeat sales. It is impossible to give you some figures on what sort of sales you should expect from each newsletter because as we know there are too many factors in game. The results are in fact not directly proportional to the quality of the newsletter. Click through (number of people that have clicked on a link in the newsletter) and open rate (number of people that have opened the newsletter) are instead results directly linked to the newsletter and we can therefore objectively debate about these. For those not familiar with these First things first, lets get our hands on some reliable data.
Mailchimp is a good source. They are the SMEs leader tool when it comes to ESP. Mailchimp is currently used by 1.2 million users with a 5000 new customers per day. They send about 80 to 100 million mails per day. The average open rate is 22%, which roughly means that in a good newsletter campaign 1 in 4 of your receivers should open your mail. When it comes to click through instead we are talking about a 3%. In other words 3 out of 100 receivers will then click on a link, pictures, promotion, etc. that has been inserted in the newsletter to end up in your social network, website or where you have decided. Also interesting to note soft bounce (when people are on holidays, their server is currently down, or mailbox full) rate of about 1% and hard bounce (wrong address, mailbox closed or disabled) rate of about 1%. Abuse rate (emails reported as spam) of about 0.04 and unsubscribe rate of 0.28%. Here below the exact breakdown per industries:
Industry |
Open |
Click |
Soft Bounce |
Hard Bounce |
Abuse |
Unsub |
| Agriculture and Food Services | 26.06% | 3.94% | 1.00% | 0.86% | 0.04% | 0.29% |
| Architecture and Construction | 25.38% | 3.86% | 2.32% | 1.98% | 0.04% | 0.35% |
| Arts and Artists | 27.97% | 3.28% | 1.17% | 0.99% | 0.04% | 0.29% |
| Beauty and Personal Care | 20.72% | 2.82% | 0.82% | 0.95% | 0.06% | 0.35% |
| Business and Finance | 20.68% | 3.14% | 1.18% | 1.09% | 0.04% | 0.24% |
| Computers and Electronics | 24.65% | 2.83% | 1.75% | 1.51% | 0.04% | 0.31% |
| Construction | 22.67% | 2.40% | 2.82% | 2.62% | 0.06% | 0.48% |
| Consulting | 18.78% | 2.57% | 1.76% | 1.57% | 0.04% | 0.29% |
| Creative Services/Agency | 23.65% | 3.36% | 1.89% | 1.75% | 0.04% | 0.37% |
| Daily Deals/E-Coupons | 13.20% | 1.88% | 0.17% | 0.15% | 0.02% | 0.09% |
| eCommerce | 17.35% | 3.00% | 0.48% | 0.43% | 0.04% | 0.20% |
| Education and Training | 22.49% | 3.42% | 1.04% | 1.01% | 0.03% | 0.21% |
| Entertainment and Events | 20.93% | 2.51% | 0.88% | 0.85% | 0.04% | 0.27% |
| Gambling | 18.72% | 2.04% | 1.02% | 1.40% | 0.06% | 0.20% |
| Games | 20.31% | 4.07% | 0.87% | 1.27% | 0.06% | 0.24% |
| Government | 25.69% | 3.64% | 0.83% | 0.74% | 0.03% | 0.14% |
| Health and Fitness | 24.27% | 3.64% | 0.83% | 0.74% | 0.03% | 0.14% |
| Hobbies | 30.71% | 6.65% | 0.56% | 0.54% | 0.04% | 0.22% |
| Home and Garden | 26.44% | 4.40% | 1.04% | 0.82% | 0.06% | 0.39% |
| Insurance | 19.72% | 2.37% | 1.15% | 1.19% | 0.04% | 0.21% |
| Legal | 21.23% | 3.25% | 1.11% | 0.99% | 0.03% | 0.19% |
| Manufacturing | 23.78% | 3.14% | 2.48% | 1.90% | 0.05% | 0.39% |
| Marketing and Advertising | 18.81% | 2.44% | 1.30% | 1.22% | 0.04% | 0.29% |
| Media and Publishing | 22.93% | 5.14% | 0.47% | 0.33% | 0.02% | 0.12% |
| Medical, Dental, and Healthcare | 22.76% | 3.07% | 1.25% | 1.37% | 0.06% | 0.29% |
| Mobile | 23.32% | 3.16% | 1.23% | 1.38% | 0.05% | 0.42% |
| Music and Musicians | 22.49% | 3.03% | 1.08% | 0.96% | 0.04% | 0.31% |
| Non-Profit | 25.12% | 3.25% | 0.79% | 0.71% | 0.03% | 0.19% |
| Other | 22.58% | 3.18% | 1.37% | 1.25% | 0.04% | 0.28% |
| Pharmaceuticals | 17.79% | 2.62% | 1.27% | 1.46% | 0.04% | 0.24% |
| Photo and Video | 27.03% | 4.28% | 1.25% | 1.22% | 0.05% | 0.41% |
| Politics | 22.60% | 2.74% | 0.79% | 0.78% | 0.05% | 0.23% |
| Professional Services | 21.72% | 3.21% | 1.69% | 1.51% | 0.04% | 0.34% |
| Public Relations | 19.98% | 2.15% | 1.26% | 1.20% | 0.03% | 0.25% |
| Real Estate | 22.12% | 2.68% | 1.29% | 1.33% | 0.07% | 0.34% |
| Recruitment and Staffing | 20.77% | 3.17% | 1.10% | 1.24% | 0.04% | 0.33% |
| Religion | 22.27% | 3.50% | 0.34% | 0.36% | 0.03% | 0.13% |
| Restaurant | 24.61% | 1.60% | 0.52% | 0.41% | 0.04% | 0.29% |
| Restaurant and Venue | 22.56% | 1.58% | 1.02% | 0.92% | 0.04% | 0.38% |
| Retail | 23.16% | 3.26% | 0.66% | 0.60% | 0.04% | 0.30% |
| Social Networks and Online Communities | 21.98% | 3.89% | 0.64% | 0.62% | 0.03% | 0.24% |
| Software and Web App | 21.86% | 3.26% | 1.64% | 1.52% | 0.04% | 0.40% |
| Sports | 26.57% | 3.91% | 0.92% | 0.87% | 0.04% | 0.28% |
| Telecommunications | 19.77% | 2.38% | 1.84% | 1.64% | 0.04% | 0.25% |
| Travel and Transportation | 20.00% | 2.77% | 1.12% | 0.91% | 0.04% | 0.24% |
We have actually seen with motorsport clients that our industry is likely to yield slightly better results. Being such an exciting industry people tend to have a closer bond to motorsport brands more than for example services, education, government, etc etc. If you are not getting close to the figures there maybe a number of contributing factors. Without analysing your newsletter is difficult to see where are can be find potential improvements. However the first advice is to split your newsletter process in few areas:
-
Content
-
Code
-
Technology
-
Database
-
Spam
It will now be easier to pinpoint where the best advantages can be gained. There are no hidden secrets on how to optimise newsletter but there is a huge amount of work to be carried. In one of the next posts we will start to examine each different area in order to understand how we can best take advantage of technology, work with current legal restraints and excite our potential client with a moth watering content.