Email Open Rates Falling? Here’s What To Do

Picking up the discussion of “incubation” from last week, subscriber Lana writes:

Another thing I noticed is people stop opening emails with time (life gets in the way) so the most receptive audience seems to be at the start.

This is *definitely* true—to an extent.

The majority of your subscribers have only a passing interest in whatever your topic is.

Depending on your market, it could be as many as 50-80%.

So it’s natural as your list grows for your open rates and click rates to go down, because over time you’re accumulating more and more of this “dead wood.”

This is NORMAL.

There are tricks you can try to wake these people up—like sending email campaigns telling them you’re about to delete them from your list.

These “reengagement campaigns” aren’t really worth the effort in my experience.

You’ll likely find that you could set your hair on fire and throw yourself into oncoming traffic—and only a tiny fraction of a percentage of these subscribers would even bother to open the email.

So my recommendation is:

Leave ’em for dead.

You can delete them if you choose.

Or just filter them out and only send emails to them occasionally.

Just don’t expend a lot of sweat over them.

Instead your time will be far better spent focusing on the 20-50% of your list that is really enthusiastic about what you’re doing.

That’s your REAL audience…

The ones with a deep and lasting interest in JavaScript programming, or leveling up their career, or building an influential blog…

They’re the ones who will buy what you’re selling…

Take action and actually improve their situation—

And tell everyone they know how you changed their life.

Serve these customers, and you’ll find that over time they multiply.

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