The danger of automatic resends

A popular tactic for increasing your email open rates is “automatic resends.”

This isn’t a bad idea at all.

However it can cause you to miss the biggest opportunities in your email list.

With an automatic resend, you create a segment of your list that didn’t open a specific email, and then resend them the same email, usually with a different subject line.

The idea here is that you’ll reach more people without “bugging” the people who read your message the first time.

A lot of the popular email tools like MailChimp and Drip offer a feature like this.

And it does work to increase your opens.

In my experience, if the original email got a 20% open rate, the resend might get an additional 8-10% of subscribers to open.

Nothing wrong with that.

The danger here is in the mindset that the automatic resend feature fosters.

You’re sending twice as much email to the people who AREN’T opening your messages to begin with.

This is exactly backwards.

I did an experiment recently that demonstrates this.

Details to come.

Related posts:

  1. Why ‘Average’ Email Open Rates Are Meaningless Last week I tried an interesting experiment with the Simple Programmer email list. Over the course of 2 days, I sent out 3 “broadcast” emails with just one major difference between them. And just check out the difference in open rates: Email #1 got an abysmal 1.8% open rate (yes...
  2. How to Skyrocket Your Email Open Rates with the ‘Uncle Sam Formula’ A few weeks back a client emailed me to say how he could hardly believe the open rate on one of the emails I’d written for him. This client has a list that’s normally very active and engaged. But the subject line I wrote for this particular email set his...
  3. Content Upgrades: Gimmick or the ‘Real Deal’? Couple weeks back I ranted about “gimmicky” marketing tactics. These techniques work initially because they’re novel—web browsers aren’t used to them, and that curiosity factor makes these techniques seem a lot more effective than they wind up being. Subscriber Fiona wonders whether a popular list building tactic falls in this...
  4. What Is A ‘Normal’ Unsubscribe Rate for an Email List? Several years ago I moved my still-tiny “Sublime Text Tips” email list from Aweber to MailChimp. MailChimp had a feature where they’d send you a daily email update on your list growth. Seemed cool, so I set it up. Every morning I’d get a message: 4 New Subscribers 4 Unsubscribed...