One of my favorite email marketing techniques is to resend emails to non-openers.
But should you resend emails to non-openers?
Resending emails to non-openers is a great way to increase sales, opens, and clicks. But you can’t resend emails to non-openers all the time because you will burn out your list.
I’ll show you how to do email resends without ruining the list you’ve worked so hard to build.
How Resending Emails Works
Assume you have a 1,000-person email list and you do this:
- You send an email with the subject line “Announcing My New Twitter Megagrowth Video Course.”
- 500 people open the email for a 50% open rate
- 25 people buy the course at $100 a pop
You made $2,500 but you want more.
You think “I can make more money by resending that email to the 500 people that didn’t open it.”
So you send the same email to the nonopeners.
Every Email Sending Provider I’ve used, including ActiveCampaign, Aweber, Infusionsoft, and Mailchimp lets you do this.
And with your second send:
- 100 people open the email
- 5 people buy the course at $100 a pop
You made an extra $500, bringing your total up to $3,000, or 20% more.
Just by sending another email.
Make sense, right?
You should resend every email to nonopeners, right?
NOT
Like with every good thing in life, there’s a catch…
You Can’t Just Resend Every Email to Nonopeners
There’s a problem with just blasting your nonopeners with resends.
You’re going to annoy people.
If they saw your subject line and didn’t respond, they weren’t interested in your message.
So if you keep sending your contacts double messages they don’t want, they’ll want off your list.
You might ask “But Michael, don’t you recommend emailing 3+ times a week?”
Yes.
But I provide a stream of fresh messages. I don’t beat people over the head with the same stuff over and over again.
Then there’s the impact on your email list health.
The most important aspect of email deliverability is your relationships with your subscribers.
How is that measured?
By your overall email open rate and click rate trends.
If you average a 50% open rate on your emails, and then you get a 5% open rate on your resends, you risk hurting your list health.
Remember, a big portion of the non-openers are unengaged subscribers.
You don’t even want those people on your list, let alone send MORE emails to them.
How I Handle Email Resends to Non-Openers
First things first: I am obsessed with long-term list health and deliverability.
So I use double opt-in when people join my list to ensure people engage right away.
I also clean my list all the time to eliminate unengaged contacts.
I’ve seen tons of 50K+ person email lists with 10% open rates and 0.1% click rates.
The common denominator: the list owner used single opt-in, and never removed unengaged contacts.
(there is a time and place for single opt-in)
So when I want to resend emails to non-openers, this is what I do.
Step 1: See If There’s Money to Be Made
If I’m going to screw with my list health, I want to be compensated for it.
So if I can squeeze out another 10-20% in sales, I will send an email.
And I’ll smile the whole time.
Step 2: See If There’s an Important Message That Needs to Get Out
There are other reasons to resend emails to nonopeners.
Like if you have an important message for customers.
Say you’re announcing a price increase for a subscription service.
You need to reach every one of your subscribers, so it’s worth sending more messages to avoid headaches later.
You might also want to get more aggressive with email resends if you’re about to launch a product and want to maximize exposure.
Step 3: Switch Things Up
If I decide to resend an email to nonopeners, I will not resend the same message.
First, Gmail will group identical messages in conversations, which just looks horrible in someone’s inbox.
Second, if I couldn’t grab a person’s message the first time out, I want to try something different.
So at the very least I’ll use a different subject line.
You Can Resend Emails to Non-Openers But Don’t Get Stupid
You know where I’m going here.
Yes, you can resend emails to non-openers. But don’t get stupid.
Only do it when you have a good reason, like a chance to boost your sales.
Thanks for listening.