What is a good open rate for an email newsletter

In short. I don’t know…But I was encouraged by my recent email campaigns. I have been blogging about my quest to get better at email marketing. On the one hand I know I need to grow my list (the next task) but first I wanted to focus on getting better at writing the things anyway. Well things have improved. I switched over my my ezine (another word for email newsletter) list manager from something I was not happy with to iContact. So far I have been pretty happy with iContact. It’s been easy to use and I have been able to set up Autoresponders. (Autoresponders are those emails that go out automatically as soon as someone signs up).

I have sent two regular emails with iContact. The first one was a holiday promotion – it promoted products, though it offered no discounts. Title – Sparkly Holiday Jewels for Girls”.
My most recent campaign was an information newsletter and included only one small sales pitch at the bottom. Title: 7 Ways to Increase Your GirlPower in 2009

Which do you think did better…And the winner was Sparkly Holiday Jewels for Girls…
Not by much. The open rate for Sparkly was 33% and the open rate for 7 Ways was 26%. The list for 7 Ways was bigger than for Sparkly, but still more people opened up Sparkly.

Now – neither newsletter produced a sale…so perhaps my comparing open rates is a moot point. Or perhaps the strength really lies in numbers. I have heard 10,000 names as a the list size needed to sell products. Hmm 10, 000 is a lot more than the 500 or so I have now. So I will keep sending emails – and I will keep comparing the numbers for you, but I am also going to focus on building my list. I have been reading about some new strategies that I will be implemented in the next few weeks…So please sign up to find out what happens next…

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