One of the keys to effective list building is making sure
your subscribers OPEN your emails.
Otherwise, you're wasting time, money, and resources.
Many email service providers charge you based on
your "list size", so a bigger list that doesn't read your
emails is a lot worse than a small list of actively
engaged subscribers.
Hence, my plea to you - OPEN OPEN
OPEN this email.
Of course, you opened this because you're reading it
now :)
Email service providers like
Aweber allow you, the list
owner, to see who has--and who hasn't--opened your
emails.
That's a critical stat to know.
If you find that a number of subscribers aren't
opening
your emails, you can do one of two things - in this order:
- Email only them to remind them of the benefits
of opening your emails. You will probably need
to get creative with your subject lines, maybe
offer a bonus.
- Prune your list.
There's no sense in continuing to mail subscribers
that don't open your emails. You're wasting your time
and money and resources.
Pruning your list
is a manual thing in
Aweber. However,
you can use tools like
AW Pro Tools to make pruning your
list easier.
It really doesn't matter how you do it, though. What matters
most is that you build a list of engaged
subscribers.
If you're finding that some subscribers never even open
your emails, just cut them. Give them a chance first, but
cut them off. You probably won't win them back. You've
conditioned them to disregard your emails.
Bill
PS - I just had an unbelievably awesome chat with
Aweber
support. I'd bought my current plan over 4 years ago and
was missing some of the newer features.
They upgraded me for free and honored my price plan
(that I'd bought through another source, as a white label
product).
I really didn't expect that.
Aweber is good people.