“They like to talk to salesmen, something. They’re lonely. I don’t know. They like to feel superior. Never bought a fucking thing.”
David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross
I’ve been writing a lot of emails in the ecommerce space lately. This is for a client who’s constantly launching new products.
A few days ago, the client wrote me with a question:
“I’m curious with all the recent launches, which have looked most promising from an open rate and revenue standpoint?”
I could tell him right away which of the products were most successful in terms of revenue. But I wasn’t sure about open rates. So I decided to dig into the data.
It turns out the relationship between open rates and sales in our case has been negative. In other words, the more people opened up our emails, the less money we made. I even ran a little regression on it. On average, each extra percent of opens cost us $100 worth of sales.
How could that be?
Well, for one thing, we keep promoting different products, and at different price points. Higher-priced products might have less overall interest, but can result in more sales.
But there are other possible explanations, too.
For example, different subject lines will select for different segments of the market.
Maybe one subject line gets you a lot of opens. But like in that Glengarry Glen Ross scene above, maybe you’re just reaching a bunch of bored leads, who like to click on sensationalist ads, and who have no intention of buying anything.
Whatever the explanation is, the message is clear:
All those millions of blog posts by email marketing experts telling you how to increase your open rates could actually be hurting your sales.
A. B. C.
Always be checking your sales numbers. Sales numbers are for closers. Open rates? They’re for bums.
Speaking of open rates, I write a daily email newsletter with very high open rates. If you’d like to get on it so you can bring those numbers down, here’s where to subscribe.