Happy Friday, Creators!
A brand new report just published over on Tradecraft today, and I wanted to share it with you. The 2022 email marketing statistics report is live, and full of incredible insight.
Take a few moments to read through this report, and then leave a comment here with what stats YOU'RE choosing to track this year. I can't wait to hear what you pick!
2022 email marketing statistics report for the creator economy
I curate my list very tightly. A reader has to want to be on my list so I make the landing page harder to find. I don't flash it in front of everybody who visits my site. I pick up about two new subscribers every three days. Even at that, it's the wide end of my funnel and I'm very happy with the results. Email is niche marketing for me, not mass media. I don't want to pay for a list of addressees that might open an email once in a while.
This stood out for me:
The average email open rate for ConvertKit creators in January 2022 was 36%.
Mine's almost 80%. That's a result of making sure that the people who get on the list are those who really want to be there. I'll take that open rate, although I suspect open rates are going to be harder to determine going forward with Apple's pixel change.
Email is "message in a bottle" time. Maybe it's opened. Maybe not. Maybe it registers as opened. Maybe not.
My philosophy here is that the unopen rate is 100% for every email I don't send.
I'm doing pretty well with click-through too:
In January 2022, the average click-through rate across ConvertKit users was 5.8%.
My CTR is very close to 14%. I send an email every month on the 15th to update the readers on where I am on the process. In that email I recommend a book I've read that they might also like. Something over 10% of those recommendations get clicked. Even if only half buy the book, it gives somebody upwards of 100 extra sales that they probably can't figure out and gives my readers something to read. 🥂
The statistic I track isn't one that CK collects. While I could track the people who click the "buy my book" link, that won't tell me what I need to know. The causal metric that correlates with income is sales. It's not one that CK can collect but it's also the one I have least control over.
My key statistic is production. How many books did I publish in the last 12 months? If the book isn't for sale, nobody can buy it.
That backs up to "How many words did I write today?" Too many days of "zero" mean not enough books get published.
Right now, my words for the year are too small to measure. I'm hoping that Camp Nanowrimo and the April Showers event will reverse that trend.
I'm going to pay attention to that metric in 2022.
Love this, Nathan. Thanks for sharing some of your numbers! I'm excited to dive into the April challenge as a trend setter for the rest of the year as well.
Are there stats you wish didn't exist on your current CK dashboard? Anything else about that particular feature that you'd change or do differently? You are proof that an engaged list works every time, and I'm always game to know more from your perspective.
I don't think the open rate means that much at the moment and it's significance will decline as it's reliability as a metric wanes. I look at it but it doesn't inform me much, if that makes any sense.
I'd like to see more than the last couple of months graphed out. Maybe as an option. Even an expanded 12-month window would be interesting. As it stands, since I only send one a month, I'm not seeing how things have changed since I sent my first email in March, 2019. I'm not sure how I would use that information but the wider view would be more meaningful to me.
One other thing about click-through. Counting the unsubscribe link, there's always at least one link in every email. If somebody opens and reads but there's no other link there? A zero doesn't mean much. Mostly, that's on me to make sure there's something in every email they might want to click (besides the unsubscribe) but it's something to consider if somebody has a particularly low CTR.
Personally, CTR is nice because it means the readers appreciate the book rec's I give them and I feel like I'm helping other authors in some small way.