Two new data sets reinforce the inevitable but still depressing idea that readers are less likely to open your newsletters or marketing messages the longer they stay on your list. The drop-off is greatest after the first few months, but by the sixth month, the decline continues at a much slower rate.

That's the bad news. The good news is that you can do something to stem the decline by engaging new readers sooner and reactivating those who have lost interest but didn't unsubscribe.

MarketingSherpa reported the drop-off rate in its new Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006 with data that also closely reflects our own experience with the Intevation Report.

According to Sherpa:

• Open rates are highest in the first 30 days after a recipient joins your list. The Sherpa study clocked an aggregate 58% open rate.
• Two months after joining, the open rate falls 13 percentage points to an aggregate 45%, the steepest drop (a decline of 22.4%) over the two-year study period.
• Six months out, the open rate hits 37%.
• After two years, the open rate settles around 33%, an overall decline of 43%.

We found similar results when analyzing open rates with the Intevation Report:

• For 0-2 months open rates averaged 51.8%.
• After 3-6 months open rates dropped to 41.6%, a decline of 19.7%.
• For the 7-12 month period, average open rate declined to 39.3%.
• And for 13-24 months open rates descended to 31.8%, and overall decline of 38.6%.

Based on the Sherpa and Intevation Report data you should probably expect a 20-25% decline in open rates from subscribers two months after they've opted in to your list. After two years, expect open rates to decline between 35%-45%.

Running Recency Reports

How do you calculate your own opt-in recency rates? First, you obviously need to have the date your subscribers opted-in to your list. Then select a few different emails (of the same type). Then run filter-based reports based on when subscribers opted in for each of the time periods you want across each of selected messages.

What if your list-reporting software doesn’t allow you to run these granular-level reports? Try plotting list growth and open rates on a chart and see where the lines go. Do open rates hold steady or decline while the total membership goes up? You're seeing the same type of decline.

What Causes The Decline in Response Rates?

A variety of factors cause response rates to decline as opt-in dates age:

• Source: Subscribers who join because of a contest or special offer, one that didn't have much to do with your newsletter content or regular offers, are more likely to lose interest after a few messages.
• Expectations: What you're sending to the list doesn't match what you promised.
• Frequency: You're sending too many messages too often, or you increase the frequency beyond what most users expect. Or you aren’t sending frequently enough. Quarterly or bi-monthly is fine for print newsletters, but readers are likely to forget who you are in the online world with frequency that low.
• Poor Start: You waited too long to send your first message.
• Irrelevant Content/Offers: You're not sending the information that many of your readers want. Either you didn’t deliver on your promise or you gave subscribers little to go on and when they found out – it wasn’t what they were looking for.
• The Competition is Better: Your newsletter or promotional email competes with similar promotional emails and newsletters and some of your readers are migrating to those that are doing a better job. They stop opening your emails, but don’t unsubscribe as they still have hope you’ll have something of value to offer them.
• The Subscriber Changes: Maybe it's not all your fault. Subscribers' needs and interests change. They change jobs and roles, give up hobbies and sports, switch brands and their babies become school age kids. Or, they just sign up for everything they come across, and they're suffering from email fatigue.
• Difficult Unsubscribe Process: Your unsubscribe process is too hard to use, find or is broken. (Better fix it quickly before you get nailed for violating the CAN-SPAM Act.)
  
  

How to Engage Newcomers and Reactivate Old-Timers

So, now you’ve calculated your declining response rates by opt-in date range and identified some of the main causes of dwindling performance.  Following are a few suggestions to help stem the decline:

• Engage your newest members right away. Send out a welcome message as soon as they confirm their subscription requests. If your next scheduled mailing isn't due to go out for a few weeks or more, create a special mailing just for newbies and send that a day or so later. It could be an FAQ, a case study, a collection of email-only offers, or a "best-of" list of your most popular articles.
• Consider following up the first or second newsletter or offer you send with a quick survey asking if they liked what you sent them, if it met their needs or expectations.
• Capture demographic information and interests during the sign-up process and than develop and send personalized messages based on that information.
• Survey all list members, asking them to rate your content, design, offers, etc. Capture some demographic data, too, so you get a better picture of who's signing up. Send it between publishing cycles or campaigns, or devote a whole mailing to it. Then, revise future content as necessary.
• Track open rates by subject line and compare click rates on articles and offers. Determine which subject lines, articles and offers drive the highest open and click-through rates and then align your future message content accordingly.
• Segment out readers who have not opened or clicked in several months to a year and send them a special reactivation offer, along with an invitation to unsubscribe.
• Increase personalization. Add dynamic content that reflects past buying behavior or content interests.
• Streamline your unsubscribe process. One that takes more than two clicks to complete is too long. Don't make people have to confirm their unsubscribe request, either.
• Invite anyone who has been on the list for a year or more to opt in again, and include an unsubscribe link for those who want out but just haven't gotten around to it.

You don't really have to drop anyone who doesn't respond, but if they're not reading or clicking anyway, they're taking up space and costing you money to email into the vacuum.

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