The Best Bad Email Campaign I've Ever Sent

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2.9K followers
Updated

I sent an email out early that, six hours later, has an open rate of 4.7% (my normal is over 30%). Furthermore, it's very likely I will be deleting over 2,700 emails from my list next week.

WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I DO THAT?

Because email is personal. And email is about engagement, not mass.

If 2,700 people are on my list, but never open, never click, probably don't want to read what I'm sending, and actually cost money in terms of my list management platform subscription, then it's better for me and for them that I let them go.

I know it hurts my ability to say, "Join ##,### other subscribers..." but I'd still prefer engagement over numbers.

So here's a screenshot of these terrible statistics...

And here's a screenshot of the email I sent...

So effectively, this was one of the worst performing email campaigns I've ever sent. But I also think it was one of the best campaigns I've ever sent.

Here's how this went down...

I use an email platform that lets me obsessively segment and tag my subscribers based on their clicks and behaviors. Segmentation is huge for making your list more personalized and engaged.

So I sent the email and created a trigger that says, if they've been on the list at least 90 days but haven't opened anything for 30 days (which totalled 2,802 subscribers) and they don't click that link, leave them in a group I can delete next week.

On the other hand, if they DO click that link, untag them so that they don't stay in the segment I'm going to delete.

The advantage here is my open rate will go much higher with future campaigns. Email providers will put my emails in spam folders less often as a result. And I'll be delivering real value to the people that want it.

It's okay to lose numbers. Just don't lose what you're really all about.

By the way, all of this was possible (and pretty easy) thanks to ConvertKit's platform. If you want to know more about it, see the Resources page of my main website or private message me here.

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Recent Comments

20

I am curious how you were able to 'tag' your email that segments your subscribers into different groups. I think I understand the if/then/else desire or results you want but how did you get your email service to understand what you wanted?

Sometimes we need to make Decisions on getting ahead.
I do normally the same.
Check your geographic sending time with your autoresponder it might be that a lot are still asleep or at work.

Thanks for sharing Brandon:). I agree with you. Rather spend your time, money and energy on the readers who are really interested in what you have to offer.

This is one of the best ways to customize your email campaigns and you are on it!

Each email management system has different features and available functions. Thank you for this view into yours.

Definitely!

What about testing it again with eye catching headlines and varying the time sent? Might that make a difference in your subscribers' responses?

You may be right. I'll have to consider it for the next run, but great advice for everyone!

Just starting to build my list with Mail Chimp so don't expect to bin thousands of subscribers any time soon but I expect your strategy will also apply to smaller lists over time.......good advice thank you.

Definitely! And you can do some segmenting in MailChimp, too.

Great article, Brandon. The ConvertKit segmentation function is an amazing feature usually found in the high end email marketing systems. There are days I wish MailerLite had it.

Yes, I stuck with MailerLite and love their features, but they booted me for promoting a product I didn't personally create. I talked with their leadership. They offer a great product, but they want to stay out of the affiliate marketing business.

Funny, they even offer an affiliate program of their own, but they don't want you to share the affiliate link in any emails sent from your account.

MailChimp was doing the same thing back when i had an account with them years ago.

Here is an off topic question. Have you taken the Blog writer's Boot Camp?

Awesome system and awesome way of doing this. I suppose it sounds bad to remove emails, but if it costs money and they are never going to convert, than it is no point to keep them. Good to clean up anyway.

Nice article. Is there any reason why your tool is better than aweber which is very much used here?

I've used Aweber in the past - great service. ConvertKit just has a lot more flexibility when it comes to tagging and segmenting. Instead of having to create multiple lists and switch between them in the dashboard, with CK, you can send an email to anyone with a certain tag (I have about 25 tags at the moment) or exclude people based on their tags.

I got hooked on ConvertKit based on recommendations from Pat Flynn and Matt McWilliams. So far, I'm loving it.

I agree after a determined period of time start weeding out the ones who never even open it, or send and email with opt out in the subject line and explain in the email if they do choose to open it.

Randy

Good idea about the opt out in the subject line!

Hi Brandon,

What's Segmentation and ConvertKit and how does it work? I haven't set up an email platform yet.

I'm looking at Leads Leap for email marketing as it has a free platform. Money is really, really tight, so a paid platform is a bit beyond me at the moment.

Thanks!

I'm not sure if I can officially recommend things here, so I won't include any links, but if you're looking to get started on a budget, I would look at MailChimp or MailerLite. Both offer free accounts up to a couple thousand subscribers with amazing features.

However, I left both because they don't allow you to do true affiliate marketing where you recommend products others have produced.

So there's also RocketResponder, which is $20 for life, no matter how big your list grows.

I would personally avoid LeadsLeap (even though I do have a membership) simply because it's so ad-heavy.

Segmentation is when you put your subscribers into different "sublists" or interest-based groups. So I have a segment of subscribers who respond well to marketing stuff while others are into leadership.

With ConvertKit (which I think starts at $29-ish), you can automatically "tag" a subscriber who clicks on a particular link. So you can say, "if you don't want to hear anymore about this particular topic, click here" and have it tag them with something like NOmarketingemails and then exclude them from future mailings instead of losing them altogether.

I will check those out. I heard that MailChimp isn't all that great, but I've not used it myself, so I will look before I make a concession. Never heard of MailLite, so I will look that one up.

$20 for LIFE at RocketResponder? That's awesome! I will look into that one as it's probably going to be as close to inexpensive with all the flashy lights and baubles that I'll need.

Thanks! :D

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