I'm enjoying a working vacation in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
I can see Mount Hood from my sister's kitchen nook where I have my laptop and iPad and assorted pads and pens.
... and I am creating new email marketing campaigns for real estate agents.
I want these campaigns to work.
I have a pretty good record with email, and I devour the latest stats and trends.
There is nothing sweeter than breaking 100% on an open rate for an email campaign.
You break a 100% open rate when people open an email multiple times because they find something compelling in the content.
I've been doing lots of email tests, for myself and clients.
I'm testing autoresponder platforms, plugins, subject lines, and market segmentation.
I saw this claim on Happy Grasshoppper, a real estate email service vendor:
"Happy Grasshopper has an average open rate of 29.3%, almost double the traditional open rates reported by other email marketers."
For the record, I am not a fan of Happy Grasshopper content. I'll save a critique for another day, but I found their claim compelling enough to do a little research.
I fact checked their claim ...
Here are recent stats from major email providers about open rates for real estate professionals:
- MailChimp - Real Estate 22%
- Campaign Monitor - 20.9%
- ConstantContact - 26.01%
- Benchmark Email - 28.5%
- Mailer Mailer - 26.03%
These numbers blow out Happy Grasshopper's claim to doubling response rates.
What is a typical email open rate?
Really, there is no typical open rate. The rate obtained for any list, or group of lists will depend on how it is measured, when it is sent, the size of the list and countless other variables. There is no shortage of benchmark numbers out there, but even between benchmark figures you will find big variation in the reported open rates.
The report from Benchmark Email is the most interesting ...
"The Open Rates statistics are quite surprising, not necessarily in the percentages of opens, which adhere closely to accepted sector standards, but by the more than two thirds (36%) of all real estate business owners and managers who claim to have no knowledge whatsoever as to what their open rates are on their email campaigns."
What more can you do to increase your unique open rates?
Of course, you want to avoid any words that make your message look like spam. For instance, “Free” or “!!!” in your subject line will result in your message being flagged as spam. In addition, make sure your “FROM” address is easily identified by your subscribers, and never use a free email address in your "FROM" address (i.e. hotmail.com, aol.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com).
TIP 1: If you really want to give your open rate a boost, personalize your subject lines. You don’t necessarily need to use the recipient’s name. If you gather additional information about them when they subscribe, you can use it to send targeted messages with modified subject lines.
TIP 2: Check out Headlinr, a free, neat little Chrome extension that serves up hundreds of headlines (and subject lines). It is very, very cool and a nice remedy for writer's block that affects all of us on occasion.
TIP 3: Personalize your email - in both text and images.
TIP 4: Insert an animated GIF into your email.
Most important ... know your numbers. You can't improve what do don't measure.
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