Noticing a drop off in open rates over the past 3 weeks. Recognize PTO and earnings may be playing a role in this, curious if others are seeing a decline in open rates and what other sellers are doing differently to combat this/cut through the noise.
Would love to hear thoughts across the community.
Hey @francis.barrett,
I manage existing customers (4 accounts) and have 1 prospect, so I may not be the best indicator of what is going on out there, but I am seeing fairly consistent open rates across the board.
But right about now you will be experiencing not only PTO, but back to school. I have noticed moving kids back to college seems to create some delayed reactions.
One thing about OOO responses…you get either mobile numbers or back ups. Back ups are trusted people. Just say’n.
I’m definitely being more conscious than ever with my subject lines, keeping it to 2-3 words as much as possible to leave more space for them to see the first part of my email. Our team sees pretty strong open rates using C-suite names in subject line (ex: Anand’s Q2 comments) and opening the email with a quote that we believe is relevant to the prospect. Anything to make it simple yet specific, other examples could be calling out a strategic priority or a podcast they were on.
@francis.barrett, I am curious what you do when you get these OOO replies and there are mobile numbers and/or back-up contacts listed?
How do you tend to approach these, and what kinds of outcomes have you had if/when you’ve taken action on either? Thanks in advance!
Absolutely a great source of verified info. Especially useful for prospects who have a decent history of opening past emails-- sometimes all they need is a call to commit to showing up.
Open rates have been declining in general in my experience but especially this summer. That said, open rates arent necessarily indicative of a person actually opening the email anymore. A lot of cybersecurity systems will open all emails to scan for malware or other risks to the business. I haven’t yet found a way to properly measure open rates. I’m thinking of ditching that metric entirely and just focusing on response rates.
Hoping someone who sells in the cyber space can add some color re: the systems that open and read emails and the prevalence of those.
Totally agree with you regarding open rats @jared.jacobovitz! That said, I look to see how many times an e-mail is open, then I send a second e-mail with a call to action (ie click on a link or something).
Even with cybersecurity software, I have found when an e-mail is open more than 5 times, you will get a response.
Not sure I would completely ditch open rates as a metric…they are a data point.
@tim.hartwell my world is a bit different. We use Outreach and I use it for all my e-mails. Unfortunately, I am not prospecting much these days into greenfield accounts, but when I was using Outreach at some early stage companies a couple years ago I stopped tracking single open rates and looking at prospects who opened e-mails multiple times…pretty much to the point @jared.jacobovitz made.
Goals are dependent on who you are targeting. If you are targeting lower level people, your multiple open rates will be much lower (~5%) of e-mails opened. If you are targeting more senior level people, your open rates should be much higher (~20%).
They both require the same amount of effort, but the most value will be targeting Sr level people.
Remember, prospecting is a lot like engaging in a conversation with someone your haven’t met and then asking them out on a date.
I’ve seen a steady increase in open and reply rates this week opposed to July and early August. I’d imagine rates will continue to increase as we move into September and organizations start considering additional software and services for FY24.
I think looking at the data and making observations is of course useful, but want to caution against inferring too much based on small sample sizes. Until you get to a statistically significant number - which our math-centric friends here will tell you is much higher than most of us would think - I’d continue to lean on the tried and true approach of getting customized and delivering relevant messaging.
Overall there may be numbers to support the fact that open rates in August are lower than other months, but if that’s the case, then you’d need to compare your current rates versus historical norms and then adjust for audience, quality of message etc. Point being, focus on what you can control. If you’re not hitting the open rate target you want, be better.
I’ve seen open rates increase but I don’t know that it means the prospect is reading the email. I had a prospect tell me he recognized my only because he had a separate folder he would move vendor emails into without reading them.
Email - Try taking off your email tracking as well if you aren’t seeing responses the cookies tend to get flagged and I’ve had a few BDR leaders tell me they are re-thinking sales automation.
I also think @andrew.gibian point is a good one especially as ChatGPT is driving up email volume and noise