We’ve written about emails before on our blog and we wanted to write about them again today! Brian Dean and the people over at Backlinko did research on 12 million outreach emails and found some interesting data that really got our wheels turning.
What we wanted to do was throw in our two cents on a few of their findings that we felt could really translate well for small businesses along with how they relate to some of our previous blog posts! You can check out Brian’s big article on their research right here. It is loaded with great nuggets of info and we highly recommend it.
From their article, here is a summary of their 10 key findings:
1. The vast majority of outreach messages are ignored. Only 8.5% of outreach emails receive a response.
2. Outreach emails with long subject lines have a 24.6% higher average response rate compared to those with short subject lines.
3. Follow-ups appear to significantly improve response rates. Emailing the same contact multiple times leads to 2x more responses.
4. Reaching out to multiple contacts can also lead to more success. The response rate of messages sent to several contacts is 93% higher than messages sent to a single person.
5. Personalized subject lines boost response rate by 30.5%. Therefore, personalizing subject lines appears to have a large impact on outreach campaign results.
6. Personalizing outreach email body content also seems to be an effective way to increase response rates. Emails with personalized message bodies have a 32.7% better response rate than those that don’t personalize their messages.
7. Wednesday is the “best” day to send outreach emails. Saturday is the worst. However, we didn’t find an especially large difference in response rates between different days that messages were sent.
8. Linking to social profiles in email signatures may result in better response rates. Twitter was correlated with an 8.2% increase, LinkedIn an 11.5% increase, and Instagram a 23.4% increase.
9. The most successful outreach campaigns reach out to multiple contacts multiple times. Email sequences with multiple attempts and multiple contacts boost response rates by 160%.
10. Certain types of outreach get higher response rates than others. Outreach messages related to guest posting, roundups and links have an especially high response rate.
These are all awesome and helpful, but the ones we want to spend a little more time on are numbers 3, 8, and 10. For the most part they all really speak for themselves based on the data they were extrapolated from. However, there are certain things that you can do as a small business that will help you make sure you are on the ball and sticking to habits that abide by these findings.
Follow-ups appear to significantly improve response rates. Emailing the same contact multiple times leads to 2x more responses.
This might go without saying, but yes, contacting people multiple times will lead to increase in responses. You have balance that fine line between showing you care and not being annoying. Often a big part of that difference is the content of your email. That is where personalization and many of the other points found in Backlinko’s study play a big role.
The other side of the coin is being able to keep track of everyone you email so you know who needs to be contacted again. This is huge! We’ve talked about automating your sales process in a blog post before on our site and discussed similar concepts. Finding a good CRM or any sort of scheduling tool can be really beneficial for keeping track of all communication that is coming from your business.
You want to be responsive with emails and always make sure you are following up, but you don’t want to spammy. Being able to properly schedule, automate, or just keep track of who gets what emails is so important for being able to do that.
Linking to social profiles in email signatures may result in better response rates. Twitter was correlated with an 8.2% increase, LinkedIn an 11.5% increase, and Instagram a 23.4% increase.
This can knock out two birds with one stone if you’re also really focusing on your social media output. It isn’t too far of a leap to assume that the more personalized and active your social media profiles are the more likely you generate a better response rate. We’ve talked a lot about social media on this blog before, discussing how businesses can use social media to build brand trust as well as other social media trends heading in to 2019.
Linking strong social profiles can do nothing but help you increase your email response rate. In turn, by having your social profiles linked to your outreach emails you’re now bringing in even more people to those profiles. It’s a good way to get a benefit on each form of communication.
It also seems with this particular statistic that Instagram shows a giant bump in response rate coming close to almost a ¼ boost in responses. Instagram is a social media app that is tailored for sharing images, a window in to your business, whereas platforms such as Twitter are more conversation focused. Linking to Instagram makes a lot of sense really, images are something that draws the eye and creates curiosity. Consumers will likely be much more interested in eye devouring your businesses instagram photos in a matter of seconds as opposed to taking the time to read your tweet timeline.
Certain types of outreach get higher response rates than others. Outreach messages related to guest posting, roundups and links have an especially high response rate.
This statistic just screams link magnets! We talked about a whole bunch of effective link magnets that help drive more conversions in one of our previous blog posts. We highly recommend checking that post out as it’s filled with great ideas to get your email marketing rolling.
Link magnets are what reel people back in and give them a reason to respond, subscribe, or buy from your email. If you can create link magnets that are easy to take part in and give consumers real value all while showing them that you know your stuff, then they are going to work for you! A good link magnet is the thing that adds that little extra juice to your email in order make it worth a customers time.
If your business is not currently using email marketing to its advantage then you need to start doing that now! Email is such a valuable tool for connecting with new and old customers you’re missing the boat by not trying to utilize its power. If you’re looking to get the ball rolling with email marketing in your business, give us a shout! We love helping small businesses and we can help you deliver the exact message you’re looking for!
