Why Your Email Open Rate Stinks, and How To Fix it

So you have a huge email list of opt in subscribers and you’re faithfully pushing out fancy emails using cool software that lets you post pictures, schedule send times, and so much more. You assumed that having all the latest email tools would help you grow your sales as your email subscribers anxiously awaited your monthly newsletter. Then reality sets in. Your open rate stinks. Your opt out rate is through the roof. The few that do read your newsletter never make purchases. So why does your email newsletter open rate stink? How can you increase your open rate and actually make sales?

The most likely reason you’re not succeeding with your email blasts is simpler than you may think. I get over 100 emails a day and I literally delete about 99% of them without ever opening them, and in many cases I just SPAM them even if I originally opted in. The reason I do it is because they are not giving me any value up front, and they know it. They just want to use their newsletter to selling something.  They forgot the biggest reason I’d ever open their email to begin with…..

WIIFM  –  What’s In It For Me

 

I was taught that before saying anything to a sales prospect – or doing anything with a potential client – to always ask myself, “What’s the WIIFM?” Or to say, I had better have value for my prospect, or it was a complete waste of his time and my time.

When you receive unsolicited calls from sales people and their opening doesn’t contain a WIFFM what do you do? You immediately cut them off and hang up. No one is interested in you forcing your sales message down our throat, be it by phone or email.

Everything single word that leaves your lips to a prospective customer, every word you print to your marketing materials, every individual action you take with a prospect, simply MUST contain a WIIFM. And you need to deliver the WIIFM immediately and up front if you want the prospect to get engaged! This is a marketing law, like the law of gravity – there are no exceptions.

That’s exactly why cold calling doesn’t work. You hate cold calls and chances are your email is just that. A one sided selfish cold call.

So if you want to improve your sales numbers, and achieve measurable success, you must never, ever address send an email without giving a WIIFM up front. And if you can’t think of any WIFFMs for your business, you shouldn’t be talking to them in the first place.

One of the greatest WIFFM’s is a free offer, but it doesn’t always have to be in the form or product or service giveaways. Your WIFFM can come in the form of information, but it must be information that’s not readily available to anyone, anywhere, and the information must provide real value. For example, a “how to” video….for example “How To  Fix A Leaky Faucet in 6 Minutes”, or you can offer an article such as “3 DIY Steps To Instantly Triple Website Traffic”.

When you constantly deliver real value in your newsletters you quickly become a trusted source of information on the field of your expertise, and when the time comes that your prospect is ready to buy, guess who will get the business? You will. In the meantime don’t be afraid to give away valuable information. You’ll find that most of your prospects won’t prefer to “do it themselves” and you’ll still walk away with the sale.

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