What’s a good open rate for my author newsletter?
Ahh open rates! For those not completely au fait with email marketing terminology, the open rate is the number of people who actually open your author newsletter. It’s not the same as the number of people on your mailing list, or the number of people who actually receive it (this is referred to as your ‘delivered’ rate).
So yes, the open rate for your newsletter is literally the percentage of people who received your newsletter in their Inbox and then… opened it.
You’ll also hear people talk about ‘click rates’ or CTRs which are again percentages and are the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your author newsletter, once they opened it.
Lots of authors want to know what a ‘good’ open rate for their author newsletter is. Understandably – if you’ve put in a lot of time and effort to build up your newsletter subscribers then just as much time crafting what you are going to say to them, you don’t want only 10% of the people on your list to actually bother to read it.
So what is a good open rate then?
Well, as with all things, it’s not super easy to answer. It’s a bit like people asking what’s a good sales figure for their book. It depends on so many variables: your genre, your readership, how established you are in your career… etc etc
But just to give you some ballpark figures…
When I worked in digital marketing for an IT company, we considered anything over 20% to be a good result. That’s because these emails were B2B (business to business).
Now, I know that sounds ridiculously low – only 20% of people actually reading our emails?! But we had quite big lists, and the subject matter was quite dry (and corporate) and we all know that everyone gets too many work emails.
With author newsletters, I’d hope for a bit higher. The author-reader relationship is a B2C (business to consumer one) relationship, and naturally even more personal than your relationship with, for example, your favourite clothes shop.
So I would say that an open rate of 40-50% would be good, and anything over 50% is really really good.
Anything over 60% is phenomenal.
I look after the newsletters for one author and she achieved a 98% open rate for her latest one, which is the stuff of dreams really, and shows just how good her content is, and how well targeted it is to her readers.
And this is the key!
If you provide good quality, relevant content, don’t trick people with inaccurate subject lines, and your list is ‘clean’ – which means the people on it are people who actually want to hear from you - then you too can hit these heady heights.
What about click rates?
You’ll find your open rate will probably remain similar for each newsletter you send (unless you do a major clean-up of your list).
However your click rates can vary hugely – because they depend on the actual content in your newsletter, which is (hopefully) different each time.
Click rates are usually much lower though than open rates. In business, 2% would be considered an average rate.
Again, we’d hope for higher for your author newsletter – anything from between 5-10% would be good. If you’re running a competition, these can be much, much higher – it all depends how appealing what you’re linking to is!
Some thoughts on unsubscribes
If you’re planning on taking a look at your newsletter statistics after reading this, then you might also notice another number on your analytics page – the number of people who unsubscribed after reading your latest newsletter.
Now this probably doesn’t feel like a nice number and one you might want to skip past without looking too closely…
BUT it's a good thing if people unsubscribe. I promise!
It keeps your list clean, making it more efficient and increasing your open rates which in turn gives your newsletters a higher ranking, and also it will save you money in the long run as when your list gets so big you have to pay to send newsletters you won't be paying to send it to a load of disengaged people who don't want your content.
“Newsletter lists are about quality not quantity. Take it from someone who used to take every unsubscribe very personally!”
It’s a bit difficult to define a ‘good’ unsubscribe rate, because there are so many different reasons people might unsubscribe, and it’s not always about the quality of your content. But you’re looking at around 0.25% as an average here.
So long as it’s below 0.5% then you’re doing a good job!
Want to find out more about how to get started with your author newsletter? Check out my free video training….
In the 30-minute video I cover the following topics:
· Why email trumps social media
· What software to use to build your mailing list
· How to get sign ups to your mailing list
· How to get even more sign ups (!)
· What to put in your author newsletter
· Technical and legal considerations
The beginner’s guide to author newsletters is perfect for you if. . .
You want to build a long-term career as an author and you know this means taking responsibility for marketing your own ‘author brand’
You don’t have an author newsletter yet and deep down know you need one, or
You have an author mailing list but you’re yet to send an actual newsletter as you have no idea what to put in it
You’ve sent a few author newsletters but have had limited response and are wondering ‘what’s the point?’
The tech of setting up your author newsletter is overwhelming you! Every time you start Googling to find the right email newsletter platform, you just want to crawl back under your duvet and pray for a miracle.
Sound good? To watch the video, simply sign up to my newsletter below, and you’ll be taken directly to the training (so you can watch it RIGHT NOW!).
Oh and you don’t have to have a Squarespace website for the advice in the video to apply - so if your author website is on Wordpress or Wix, it’ll still be helpful to you.
“thank you for this excellent and hugely helpful training”
And on another note…. why not check out my exclusive mini-course? It’s just £75…
The DIY Author Newsletter Course
If you have a Squarespace author website, then you’re in luck, because Squarespace recently launched Campaigns – their own email newsletter platform, and, like all things Squarespace it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL and really easy to use too.
If you hate Mailchimp, then seriously, it’s for you – it will make your life so much easier and save you heaps of time.
I love Squarespace Campaigns, and I designed this course specifically to help the many authors I speak to who have Squarespace websites set up, but have yet to sort out their author newsletter.
In the course, step-by-step, I walk you through how to set up and send your own beautiful author newsletter. By the end, you'll be sending newsletters with ease!
Click the button below to find out more about the course. It’s priced at £75 and if you sign up, you’ll have lifetime access. 😊
