PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT | April 2008
By Megan Kiefer, LinkShare Leadership Development Associate
Email newsletters are one of the main methods for communication with publishers in your program. Newsletters provide an avenue to deliver updated creative and important program information to your publisher base. One way to gauge the success of your communications is to track the open rate, which will give you an idea of how many publishers are opening each newsletter. Read on to learn more about open rates, including: how open rates are calculated, the factors that may affect them positively and negatively, and ways you can try to increase the number of publishers who read your newsletters.
How do we calculate open rates?
Two main variables are needed to determine open rates. The first is the total number of publishers who were selected to receive your newsletter. The second is the number of publishers who actually opened your newsletter, which can be determined using a tracking pixel. It is standard to leave a seven day window for publishers to open the newsletters before performing this analysis. Once the two variables have been determined, you then divide the number of publishers who actually opened the newsletter with the total number of publishers who received it. The percentage generated is the open rate for your communication.
What factors affect open rates?
Many factors can alter your open rates including: the day/time the newsletter is sent out, the communication subject line, content, and the selected audience. Monitoring your open rates over time can determine if any of these factors are affecting your numbers.
What are causes of low open rates?
There are many explanations for why newsletters may be receiving low open rates. Some of these include bad subject lines, blocked images, list fatigue and spam filters.
Your communication subject line is one factor that can greatly influence your open rates. It is important that your subject line is void of any words that will trigger spam filters (i.e. help, percent off, and reminder). In addition, you should ensure that your subject line is concise. Subject lines with 40 or fewer characters tend to result in higher open rates as compared to subject lines containing 50 or more characters.
Another factor that can cause low open rates are blocked images in newsletters. Many email providers now offer privacy/security settings, which can cause images in HTML newsletters to not be visible initially. In order to receive HTML images, most users have to manually change this privacy setting. If your publishers do not do this, they will not receive the images in your newsletters and over time might be less likely to open your communication.
Finally, newsletter frequency can also negatively affect open rates. Sending out too many newsletters will not only clutter your publishers’ inboxes, but it can also run the risk of turning your publishers off from opening your communications. To prevent list fatigue, we suggest that you only send out newsletters when necessary.
What are ways to increase open rates?
Publishers in your program are most likely approved in many other advertiser programs as well. Therefore, they are most likely receiving email newsletters from many advertisers every day. When a publisher opens your newsletter, you only have a small window of opportunity to make the most of their attention. If a publisher recognizes that your newsletters are easy to navigate and straightforward, they will be more likely to read your newsletters in the future, therefore increasing your open rate. Here are some tips:
- Only include the most relevant information– for example current promotions or program announcements which will help your publishers generate sales.
- Provide them with top-converting creative, top selling products, top selling categories, new items, and ways to merchandise.
