Handyman biz fixes busted thinking about email open rates

Daily email reader Faith Teel once revealed one of many reasons why putting all your, er... faith... in soft metrics like open rates is dangerously short-sighted. Take it from here, Faith: === About mood being more important for response rates than split test variables... I run a handyman business with my husband, and we've been doing it about 5 years. At this point we know what times of year people are going to call, and when they won't, to the point that we plan our vacations around it. The slowest time is just before tax day. The best time is right about now. And there are even repeating sub-cycles related to New Year's resolutions, school letting out, and so on. There's even a season for cheapskates and lousy jobs like cleaning up bat guano or whatever. It's always been that way no matter what I do to our web presence or marketing. The only thing that changes is the quality of the customer, in response to the quality of my marketing. === I know many an offline business owner baffled by online marketers. In fact, I think the only people who are more amused at online marketers obsessed with email open rates than offline business owners who work in the real world are computer scientists and engineers who know how predictably & wildly inaccurate open rate metrics are. And this is only getting worse each year. ProtonMail has been especially bragging about making tracking even harder. My favorite example of the futility of obsessing over open rates: A few years back I got a testimonial from an Email Players subscriber who said my methods had helped him get his client more sales in a December (the lowest selling month usually) than the rest of the year. But… “Ben, how can I get my open rates above 9%?” Not sure he understands how this works… Anyway, it’s important to track opens for some things. Like to monitor the health of your list. (i.e., if you see your opens go from 50% to 1% something’s rotten in Denmark) But mostly it’s a very soft metric at best. More: The new Email Down ’n Delivery course I am launching with my biz partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard (former Navy Nuclear engineer-turned-software developer & one of the world’s top email automation specialists) goes into this a lot more deeply than I can here, and how it relates to getting higher inbox deliverability and engagement. Frankly, you can sometimes make more with a lower open rate than a higher open rate if you understand how the game works. We’re selling it dirt cheap during its launch. But, only until tonight (Friday 9/8) ad midnight EDT. Details here: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/deliver]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2023 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA