You are emailing the wrong people in your email list.

I spoke to Andrew from CrowdFundingNerds, an expert in marketing who helped me double my open rate with this one tip.

He told me that I was emailing the wrong people in my list of over 1,000 subscribers. By sending out a massive email to all of my subscribers, I am diluting my open rate because the dead/unresponsive people in my list who will never open my emails.

You should be emailing the people who open your emails.

Three example campaigns I ran before speaking with Andrew. Notice the abysmal open & click rates.

With a very low open rate, your emails are being sent to either the spam folder or the promotions tab in Gmail. And once your emails are sent there, it will never ever be read or even seen by your subscribers.

Instead of emailing everyone, only email the people who have opened any of your last X campaigns.

So instead of emailing your entire list, try sending an email to a segment of subscribers who have opened any of your last 10 or so campaigns.

Try sending an email to only the people who have opened any of your last 10 campaigns

This new segment of users now has a whopping 50% open rate!

Why even keep these subscribers on your list?

A higher open rate is better for the smaller “update” type emails that you send out once a month. This way you can develop a closer relationship with the people who truly care about your game without bothering the people who are only passively interested. For the big important announcements like Kickstarter launch date, you can send the email to your entire list, but keep the intimate stuff separate for the fans who actually care.

But what about the low click rate?

For most news emails, it’s okay to have a low click rate as long as you are not actively trying to get a subscriber to do something. You just need to send an email out once a month to remind them that you exist. The click rate only really matters when push comes to shove (for example a Kickstarter campaign launching).

Send a follow up email one week later

Exactly one week later, try sending the same email again to the people who didn’t open your last email. Change up the subject line so that it doesn’t get grouped together with the previous email. Sometimes people just lose emails in their busy day-to-day lives. This way you can easily get another 20% opens without annoying anyone else on your list. 👏

Thanks for reading! Want more tips?

This article is part of a series of marketing tips that I wrote. If it helped you in any way, please let me know in the comments or by email at 1min@unicornwithwings.com! So many people have helped me on my journey and I’d love to pay it forward. No strings attached at all.