In one week, I've had two emails come through from clients.

One was the best kind of email.

And one was the worst.

In the first email, our retainer client told us she's just had her best launch EVER. That's a multi-6-figure launch of her group programme.

Together, we've worked on:

• 8 months of strategic weekly newsletters to nurture her audience
• her messaging and launch strategy
• a pre-launch strategy and sequence
• a waitlist sequence
• a sales sequence
• a sales page
• (and an onboarding sequence too, which helps post-sale rather than pre-sale)

The second email I received was basically: "Hey Eman! Our funnel isn't making sales for us yet."

Oh.

So, of course, Alicia and I (a copywriter on my team) dive into the analytics to figure this out, and it turns out the sequence is actually performing great in terms of engagement.

Some of the open rates are at 45%, 55%, 38.1%...the lowest being 31.1%.

Some of the click rates are at 9%, 8.2%, 3,6%, the lowest being 1.7%.

The unsubscribes are minimal.

(As a reference point, HubSpot says an open rate above 30% is solid, between 45-50% is strong, and above 50% is exceptional.

HubSpot also reports the average click rate in retail is 1.34% and 2.21% for B2B services. But that's during non-launch periods. During a launch period or full-on sales funnel, you can expect stats to be lower than usual).

According to the performance of my client's sequence, her audience is engaged and interested in the programme. So what's going on with the funnel? Why aren't more people buying?

Maybe it's not the emails, after all?

We've finished our analysis and we have our suspicions, so Alicia is about to start optimising.

She'll also be reworking some of those subject lines because even though 31.1% is very much solid (especially in a sales funnel), I'm a high-achiever with perfectionist and (recently diagnosed) OCD tendencies, which means I want my clients to have the absolute best of everything 😆

My point?

In the exact same week, I've had a funnel that's brought in record sales without issue...and another one that seems to be working... but something, somewhere, is slightly off.

And that's just life in the world of email marketing. We expect this to happen sometimes, but that doesn't mean we just give up when it does.

Some strategies will work, and other times those SAME strategies won't work.

It's all an experiment.

Once you change your mindset and start thinking of it as such, you'll feel the pressure slide off your shoulders, and you might even start to enjoy the challenge.

I like to think of email marketing as a jigsaw puzzle.

You need to figure out which (email) pieces go together, and which pieces don't – even when you really really want to just smush them together and hope for the best.

When it comes to email, you have to be okay with trying and winning, trying and losing, trying and getting frustrated, trying and reworking.

You optimise, and you tweak, and you assess, and you reassess – knowing that when you finally figure out what makes your emails work, they won't just work...

...they'll sing.

(Preferably Stripe pings).

So if your email marketing is good but not great yet...

If you're getting opens, but not enough...

Or you're getting sales, but you need more...

Keep going, keep trying, keep experimenting.

Eman :)

PS. A little life and business update from me:

👶🏽 I'm on maternity leave at the mo, but I'm getting ready to return to work very soon. We're still open to and welcoming clients, so you can enquire to work with us right here​

🎥 I'm launching a new YouTube channel that's allll about email marketing and running an email agency. Subscribe now and get notified when I publish my first video :)

📖 If you're a book-lover, join the fiction-focused, romantasy-friendly virtual book club I've started with my friend, Bree Weber.

It's totally free, it has nothing to do with business, and it exists purely to feed our love of (and addiction to) books.

Right now, 18 of us are reading The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, and if you join us inside A Court of Pages & Prose now, you'll be able to catch our first Zoom meet-up on 21st October.

(You'll have to download a cool app called Fable. But again, it's all free and none of this is at all business-related.)

Chat soon!

Find me online, Reader? 😍👇🏽

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