All email addresses are not created equal…
Have you read Blog Tyrant‘s guest post on Traffic Generation Cafe yet? You’ll find a lot of great tips on how to avoid making stupid mistakes and increase your email optin conversions.
However, what happens after you did convince a visitor to give up their email address in exchange for whatever it is you are offering, but the email address they provide is not real?
Or they simply get your freebie and never open another email from you?
Sure, a subscribers’ list is the backbone of any successful online business.
Sure, the bigger it is the better.
I am all for building a huge email list.
But I’d much rather have a smaller, but very active list that loves getting my emails, reads them, click on the links, and graces me with affiliate sales occasionally.
When a Big List Is Not a Good Thing
1. It hurts your sales.
One of the main reasons an email list is the bread and butter for so many businesses is the ability to monetize those lists.
After all, the people who got on your list already expressed their desire to hear from you.
As you continue to send out value-packed emails, they’ll trust you, like you, and won’t mind seeing an occasional product recommendation from you.
However, that will only happen if there’s someone on the receiving end of your emails, and dead or fake or unattended email accounts don’t make the cut.
2. It hurts your deliverability rate.
Deliverability is the percentage of all emails that actually get to your recipients’ inboxes.
The higher the deliverability, the fewer emails are returned to you after each mailing.
The autoresponder service that I use, Aweber, boasts deliverability rates exceeding 99%.
However, no matter how good your autoresponder is, YOUR deliverability rate could be much lower than that.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are starting to pay more and more attention to reader engagement when they decide whether to deliver your email or not.
So if your list is full of unresponsive email addresses, your deliverability rate will be a lot lower.
Also email addresses from known disposable email address services will also hurt your deliverability.
3. It hurts your pockets.
If the two points above hadn’t convinced you yet, then maybe this one will.
Most email autoresponder services charge you by the number of subscribers you have, whether active, unsubscribed, or undeliverable.
For instance, with Aweber your monthly investment for:
- up to 500 subscribers is only $19;
- 501 - 2,500 - $10 more;
- 2,501 - 5,000 - $30 more;
- etc.
Keeping your list clean and lean will ensure that you are not paying for a bunch of dead email addresses.
How to Fight Back
Let’s look at the ways you can build a huge AND responsive list.
1. Don’t offer a freebie.
Do the opposite of what I do, in other words.
If you ask your readers to simply subscribe to a newsletter, those who subscribe understand that it’s more of a long-term commitment and the only reason they’ll unsubscribe or stop opening your newsletters is if they are that boring.
2. Exclusive emails.
Keep it interesting. Don’t send the same stuff to your list as what you publish on your blog.
Make it more exclusive and your subscribers are much more likely to stick around.
3. Exclusive giveaways.
Promise (and deliver) an exclusive giveaway to your list subscribers only.
For best results, do it on a monthly basis.
I am adding a giveaway to a free blog audit that will be published on my blog as a benefit to being on my list for example, so if you are interested, be sure to subscribe.
4. Use double opt-in.
This is a great way to combat fake email addresses and sift out those who are not really interested to begin with.
The basic idea behind a double opt-in is requesting your new subscribers to confirm their interest in receiving your emails - all done automatically via your autoresponder.
Only AFTER they click on that confirmation link will they be given access to your download page.
In order to set up a double (also referred to as “confirmed“) opt-in in Aweber, go under List Settings and click on Confirmed Opt-In field.
Then make sure the green ON button is… well, on.
Requiring a double opt-in will also provide you with proof that someone opted in and have fewer spam complaints.
Important to know: Aweber will store unconfirmed opt-ins for 30 days and then will automatically delete them, which is great.
However, if you are getting close to being charged an additional fee for storing more subscribers, it pays to delete them manually.
I think about a week is plenty enough to give someone to confirm their subscription, but it’s up to you, of course.
To delete the unconfirmed addresses in Aweber, go into Subscribers tab and perform the following search:
In the “Date Added” field you can choose to give your unconfirmed subscribers 1-2 weeks to confirm and set the date before that.
That way you make sure you don’t delete anyone who simply didn’t have a chance to open your confirmation request.
5. Monitor your list.
No matter what you do, some email addresses will go inactive or some people will simply stop opening your emails - alas.
The best way to check for such inactive subscribers is to do the following search:
Let me explain what I did here:
- Out of all subscribers, I chose the “no opens” option and set the date almost 1.5 months ago – to be on the safe side. Basically that means that this particular group of people hasn’t opened a single email for over a month. Of course, you can be much more conservative here.
- Then I added another segment “date added” to make sure I excluded all fresh subscribers who simply might not have had a chance to confirm their subscription yet.
VERY important to know:
The way Aweber tracks open rates is by placing a one-pixel image in each email.
If a user has images disabled, that image won’t be displayed, and an open won’t be recorded for that user.
That’s why my Aweber email template says what it says at the top:
If you’d like to know how to customize your emails to match your site and brand, take a look at my email newsletter templates tutorial (can be applied to most autoresponders).
Now that you have potentially identified those subscribers who don’t seem to open their emails, you have a choice: cut them loose or give them a second chance.
You can choose to send them an email that urges them to open it first of all (with the subject line like “Open this email to show me you are alive!”), and then ask them to enable their images so that you know that they actually want to stay on your list.
Wait to see who shows up as an open and remove the rest.
Marketing Takeaway
When it comes down to list building, you CAN have your pie and eat it too.
Huge AND responsive email list - here we come!
If you enjoyed this post, please share it!
Start Your Own Email Marketing List for Only $1.00
If you haven’t started building your list yet, let me tell you - you are missing out big time.
My list is the number one reason I make the money I make with this blog and have such an engaged readership.
Aweber is the best email autoresponder I have even used, and I am not the only one. Many A-list bloggers I know also use it for their businesses.
All the features I just mentioned are just one tiny example of what you can do to improve your email marketing with Aweber.
Aweber offers a $1 trial month for all new customers. You’ll have access to all features a paid account is entitled to: unlimited lists, email campaigns, automatic follow-ups, broadcasts, and many, many more.
If after 30 days you don’t like them, just let them know and Aweber will give you your $1 back. Guaranteed.
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Chad
Hi Ana,
Hey I’m on your list and so far, I’m clickin’ through! I like your blog and appreciate the monthly income report as it’s helpful to see what other people are doing to make money…
As for emails, I can’t bring myself to delete ‘inactives’ because the way I see it the money I would save but cutting back my list could be made up with one affiliate sale… So if I delete somebody I could be missing out on potential sales down the road.
Also, in my niche (dating) I get guys who read my emails, then quit when they meet a girl. But then when they break up in a few months they want to come back and buy a whole bunch of dating guides to help them get “back in the game”…
I’m sure this same thing happens in the IM niche where people quit IM temporarily and then get motivated to try again and start opening there emails from IM lists they joined..
So that’s why I’d be reluctant to scrap a subscriber, just because they go AWOL doesn’t mean they are gone for good!
Those are good points, Chad - since your niche has ups and downs, keeping your list intact makes sense.
To take things a step further I recently stumbled on Aweber’s function of creating a special segment for those who have not opened within a certain time frame or those who may have clicked on an aff link yet didn’t purchase. On the homepage you click on a selected message showing its stats and then there will be an option to send a message to a certain group which you can make a name for 😉
Good point, Caleb.
I’ve seen that feature before, but never used it.
Kesha Brown
I can’t tell you how much this article helped! You’re the first person who has said not to offer a freebie. This was always a huge showstopper for me. Because I didn’t have the “perfect” freebie, it took me forever to even put up a subscription box! I wish I had known this earlier. But, alas, thank you for the refreshing piece of advice on this common, yet elusive, topic
~Kesha
You are very welcome, Kesha.
Of course, freebie or not, you still need to give your readers a good reason to subscribe!
Ana,
I love the tips on monitoring your email. So many people think that getting someone to sign up is the end of the job, but it is only the beginning. As you pointed out there are quite a few ways to find out who is really “there” and ensure you are getting the most out of your lists.
Pure numbers is nice… but it is much nicer to have a responsive list. Great article!!
Thank you, Steve!
Abel Pardo Fernandez
It’s really sad to observe how there are a lot of bloggers than don’t use analytics at all. Analytics aren’t just for websites, but also for email marketing.
If you are sending your email to people that no opens it, it’s as bad as if you give a dossier to one person that never wanted it.
Indeed, Abel.
Maybe is not such an intelligent question but enabling images works for a single website or enables all images received from everyone?
Anyway you’re correct when you say that there are numbers and numbers, usually we got stuck with how many readers we have, backlinks and everything we can measure but this doesn’t mean they are good numbers, or useful. Like the difference there is between having 1000 backins from website with 0 to 1 pagerank and one website with a pagerank of 6.
It depends on your email client.
For instance, I use Gmail and it allows me to give permission to view images on a case-by-case basis.
Thanks for the tip about enabling graphics, Ana. I didn’t know that’s how AWeber records an open!
I thought you just wanted us to see your cool new graphics!
LOL, Bob - there’s more to it that meets the eye.
Valuable advice, yet again :). I know aweber is famous for it’s exceptionally deep statistics, maybe it deserves the price just for that :).
Hi Ana,
about the DELETE part…
how can you delete unsubscribed people from those results? there f is no checkbox next to their info to Erase them
tks
Hi Ana,
Wow, I didn’t know the little trick how to check for inactive subscribers in
Aweber. That little nugget will save me a lot of time. Thanks for sharing that!
The other tips are great as well. I had stopped giving away freebies a while ago, but was thinking of offering them again. I may not now after reading your great post
Thanks for always being on the cutting edge and sharing your great insights!
Ilka
You are so welcome, Ilka, and thanks for coming by.
Just got back from your blog; great email trick!
Yay, I’ll work on staying there, Jay.
Either way, interesting way of doing it.
I haven’t used my MS for a couple of days.
Ana:
I had no clue not displaying images recorded a no open. I will be absolutely sure to do so from here on out as I can NOT be kicked off your list!!!!
Lisa
Better make sure!
Well, the new optin form I am testing right now still offers the freebie, but doesn’t make it the main draw like it was before.
Now I always list some benefits of why my subscribers would want to stay on my list long-term.
Nothing conclusive on the test yet, but so far the new form is winning.
Daniel Wood
Hi Ann, I like both your ideas - exclusive emails and exclusive giveaways. Sending the same information in mail as you have posted on your blog doesn’t make any sense. While giving away a free gift from time to time like the one, you suggested free blog review, is a good way for not only retaining the old subscribers but to catch the attention of new ones.
Indeed, Daniel.
Thank you, Ana!
A freebie is the main reason lists get bloated with useless email addresses. Everyone likes to get something for free, but only a few would actually pay for that. And there are the people we are interested in.
I’m not saying some of the freebie lovers won’t ever buy products, but that conversion rate makes me think it’s a waste of time to try and convince them.
Yes, there are plenty of freebie hunters out there, Stan.
Nice post, it’s a good point that you should offer something unique in your email list. These days people get so much information, I often unsubscribe from email lists if they are just sending me links to their blog posts that I can get in twitter or by subscribing to their feeds.
It’s interesting re tracking. Looks like mailchimp uses the same method which is kind of interesting because if you are sending a fairly plain email like I do these days (and a lot of internet marketers do) then most people have no reason to click on the ‘display images’ link. I notice in yours, you specifically include images and ask people to click on them.
Still I think click through rates are probably a better measure to keep an eye on.
Thanks again for the post.
That’s one of the reasons I started to include images in my emails to begin with.
Click-throughs REALLY depend on your copy, Dan, vs open rates are a good measure of how interested your list is in what you have to say.
True, but open rates I don’t think really tell you whether people are interested. For example in my case all of my newsletters come in, they are set to auto download images and set to be marked as read by default. They go into a folder that I only look at occasionally. All of these will register as ‘read’ even though I haven’t read them.
Even for most people who probably don’t do this they probably still click on the email just to hav ea quick look and it will mark it as read but you still don’t know that they have read it.
Really the only people who you know have read the email are ones who click on a link in the email I think.
I didn’t even know you could do that with emails, Dan! Why subscribe?
Well it’s not my preferred way to get content since I work off my ‘unread emails’ as my to do list, every email that comes in as unread ads to my list of things to do (i.e. read it and mark it as read) so I prefer to get my content from Twitter or RSS where possible but in cases where the newsletter offers somethings more useful than just a plain blog feed or if the person doesn’t have a blog or newsletter I’ll subscribe and then just have them come into a folder which I check from time to time. I’m sure I’m not the only person who does that? I automatically mark it as read so I see the email in my list of emails but I know I don’t have to action it.
So odd, I don’t have that parameter.
Thanks anyway Ana, I’ll check with Aweber.
Yes, Liz, I’d call Aweber.
I agree. I don’t want to get blog updates in my inbox - nothing special about it.
I am just staring doing the blog audits; will see how it affects retention rates!
Mark Aylward
Hi Ana
Great and informative post. I’ve also had an e-mail template on my list of things to research and execute on for a while now. You just bridged that gap.
I did want to mention that I would have preferred that link opened in a new window even though it was still on your site because your posts always have multiple executibles and you could probably increase your readers engagement that way because your quality is so high-just a thought.
I’d love your feedback on my latest post if you have a moment.
Cheers!
Mark
Hope you’ll get to it, Mark.
Interesting point about opening in a new window…
I used to always set my links to open in new windows, but then I decided that it might affect my bounce rate in a negative way. So this is an experiment of sorts to see if it goes down after this small change.
Debra Gould
Ana, great post. Curious why you think opening link in a new window would increase bounce rate. Wouldn’t tracking still see you coming from another page within the same site? I generally have links open new window too unless I am sending them to a sales page.
Honestly, Debra - I don’t have a clear-cut answer on this one.
Google doesn’t REALLY address this issue. I have some logical reasons that make sense, but in the end, I have no idea. lol
Of course, there’s also a usability issue. Some readers like to have new pages open, because they don’t loose the original post, but some complain that they hate having too many tabs open…
Ana,
I use the Freebie but also have a double opt-in. My hope is that they won’t go through the trouble to opt-in twice if they only want the free book.
You keep talking about aweber I keep getting closer to purchasing… One of these days I’ll get off Free Mailchimp… But we’ve already discussed why that must happen.
Thanks for the great article!
Ryan H.
Double opt-in would certainly deter some, Ryan; especially those folks who are using a dummy email address.
Hi Ana,
Really helpful post, but I have one question. I don’t have the ‘no opens’ option on my Aweber View segment. Is there a parameter I need to set to get that option that I missed?
Thanks, Liz
These are standard options for Aweber, Liz.
In the first “Select Fields” dropdown menu, go all the way to the bottom (you’ll have to scroll down) and it’s the last option on the list.
I’m very reluctant to do anything based on Aweber open rates. Gmail users make up over 50% of my own email list, and by default Gmail has images disabled.
Plus, even though I enjoy your emails Ana, I never noticed your little ‘please enable images message’ until I read this post. So i think you might be deleting potentially still active subscribers by doing that.
Perhaps using clicks might be a better way of filtering out people? Not sure about this either, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do some more testing on myself.
I don’t think click tracking would work for this purpose, Chris - much fewer people actually click on the links vs open emails…
I think sending out a “wake up” email is always a great idea.
Hi Anna
One thing to keep in mind with deleting “no open” subscribers is that the text version of your email doesn’t have any tracking links at all. So those people will never show an open or click. The only way to avoid that is to not have a text version (which will increase your SPAM scores).
AWeber has an article about the pros and cons of including HTML and text only versions of each email. For some reason AWeber’s search server is down right now so I can’t locate the article.
As for the no-freebie approach, it is a nice idea. It doesn’t work too well for me at this point although I have not built up a solid base of traffic. However, the freebie is a good hook and people pretty much expect it now.
I’m thinking of having the freebies for completely free — i.e. no opt-in. Then the freebie will link back to the opt-in page (with some related bonuses). That way I’d be getting readers who have actually read the report.
I’ll look up that post, Bill.
That’s why I always want to send out a “wake up” email first…
Do you think anyone still uses plain-text emails?
Good point about offering your report for free.
Here’s another idea: offer most of it for free, but give them a choice to opt in to get the last part.
I found one of the articles that I was looking at: http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-template-design/73-percent-email-newsletters.htm
It is over 2 years old, but it does give some info on HTML vs plain-text. As for how many people still receive them, I’d imagine it is a pretty small number. And I’d imagine not many of them are interested in signing up for newsletters 8=)
And back to the idea of free offers, I saw once a series of 6 free reports. The first you could download directly. The other 5 came when you signed up for the list after reading the first one. I like that model.
Thanks for finding the link for me, Bill!
Yes, 2 years are a long time and I am pretty sure the ratio has greatly changed since then.
Hi Ana,
I am also using AWeber, and after reading one of your posts (a long time ago), I started to find inactive email addresses once a month in order to remove them from my list. I had never thought about this before, I guess I just thought that AWeber removed them automatically
I do offer a freebie, but as long as it’s highly relevant to my business, I believe it’s worth it… but I agree that I probably get a lot of people on my list who’ll probably never buy anything from me. On the other hand, it creates a lot of interesting conversations
Did you see my new opt-in form in the sidebar, Jens? I am testing a new approach - trying to avoid making my freebie the main reason to subscribe.
Yes, I do the same kind of cleaning regularly as well, especially when I was trying to keep my list under 2,500. lol
I did see it, but I wasn’t sure if it was new (and I’m already on your list)
What’s different about it?
The only things that my old form highlighted was the freebie, but not the long-term benefits of staying on my list.
That’s changed now and I am waiting to see the results.
Daniel Roach
Yes! I love that someone is finally saying “Don’t offer a freebie!”
Freebies are nice, and they won’t hurt (if they’re good quality), but they’re also masking value problems for a lot of bloggers. They get opt ins and think they’re doing really well, but their unsubscribe rate is through the roof, or their open rate is abysmal. In other words, their list is next to useless. All the freebie is really doing is masking the fact that they haven’t demonstrated enough value to make readers WANT to be on their list, and WANT to read their emails. The freebie ought to be the cherry on the sundae. If you have to bribe them, they don’t want to be there.
This post has got some super, practical advice, Ana. I dig this one
Thanks, Daniel!
I am working on pulling my freebie out as the main incentive - if they don’t want to be on my list because of my kick-ass updates, it’s their loss.
By the way, just got back from your blog; impressive writing! No comments enabled?
Daniel Roach
Not yet. It’s still a new project and I tend to keep comments disabled for the first few months until the blog really gets its legs under it. Thank you for the compliment though, I’m really glad you liked it!
I think you have a great way with words, Daniel. Look forward to seeing your blog grow.