Big Email List = More Traffic? 3 Tips to Market Better
Listen on the go by downloading the audio of today’s video here.
- Today, Matt answers a question from a reader about why a big email list doesn’t necessarily translate to more traffic.
- The question refers back to another MattHack about The Unexpected Benefit of STOPPING (5% of our traffic equals 66% of our sales).
Hey guys. Matt Ackerson here, founder of Autogrow.co. In these Matt Hack videos, I look to give you an actionable tip, one takeaway at a minimum, that you can take and implement to get results in your sales funnel, to get more conversions for your e-mail list, and grow your bottom line.
Today, I'm answering a question from an audience member. It's a question about a recent other Matt Hack that I did, and it's from Jordie van Rijn. I hope I'm saying your name right.
He says, "Hey Matt. How are you doing, man? I actually enjoy reading some of your pieces." Okay. What about the other pieces? I feel like this might be a backhanded compliment. But anyway, I appreciate it, Jordie. Thanks for reading.
THE QUESTION
Jordie says:
“How can the videos only be 5% of your 32,000 monthly visits? In other words, 1,500 visits. That's the 5% if your email list is over 20,000 people?"
MATT’S ANSWER
Now, this is a multifaceted question, so I just want to break it down into three different parts to accurately and fully answer, because it's a good question.
Takeaway #1
So first off, the piece that Jordie is referring to is, "The Unexpected Benefit of STOPPING (5% of our traffic equals 66% of our sales)"
So basically, a few weeks back I decided to put all of the Matt Hacks videos on pause. I decided just stop doing it because it felt robotic and forced, and I want to do quality over quantity, right? So I stopped doing it. And the original intention behind doing the videos was to grow our traffic. I figured if we were putting out more content more frequently, it would get more people to our website. Fantastic.
And our traffic did grow. In fact, our traffic grew from around 26,000 to 27,000 to where it's at right now, about 32,000 visits per month. However, when I went back for the last 30 days and checked how much traffic we were getting from the Matt Hacks, I was surprised.
I looked at our Google Analytics, specifically at the pages where there was a Matt Hack being published. I looked at how many visits, added all those up, and I said, "This is only 5% of our traffic." So that was a major factor in deciding to pause the video.
And further, to go back and kind of answer the first part of Jordie's question and to give you what I think is a good lesson and a key takeaway here is this. Part of why the traffic wasn't higher was because for the Matt Hacks each week, we would segment our e-mail list.
When people come to our e-mail list, we survey them, or we infer what their biggest challenge is based on whatever lead magnet is that they're downloading from us. And we did that because of something we noticed in the first couple of weeks of putting out Matt Hacks, when we sent them to our entire e-mail list. The drawback we found was that, over time, when we would put out an in-depth article that we really wanted to promote, it wouldn't get as much attention.
The click rate was dropping over time because we were sending e-mails more frequently. So we were kinda desensitizing our list. Of course, we didn’t want to see that type of trend of open rates and click rates going down, so we segmented the e-mail list. After that, click rates and open rates started to go back up. So that's one actual takeaway for you to think about and how you can actually segment your e-mail lists.
Takeaway #2
Let’s get to the second takeaway, and kind of nuanced answer to this question. So, on the AutoGrow blog, it says, "Join Over 20,000" e-mail subscribers”, right? We actually have close to 30,000 subscribers who've joined our e-mail list in recent months and years, but these aren't necessarily active contacts.
Some portion of these people have unsubscribed, and another portion of people have not. We've actually just pruned our e-mail list using an automation, which I can talk more about it in an upcoming Matt Hack video in you’re interested. We automatically remove people from our e-mail list in order to keep a good percentage of people who are active and engaged.
Otherwise, we'd be paying twice as much for e-mail marketing software, and half of our e-mail list just wouldn't be as responsive. I'd rather have an email list of 12,000+ active e-mail subscribers with a decent open rate and click rate as opposed to far less than 1% of people actually clicking on the e-mails that we actually go ahead and send. So that's tip number two from this video.
The second takeaway is that actively pruning your e-mail list can help with having a higher-quality e-mail list. Now, the downside to that is this. Yes, I was using the vanity stat version of this. So, we have 12,000 subscribers, but since we've been pruning or e-mail us more aggressively, we only have 12,000 active e-mail subscribers. And that's a good number. That's what I prefer anyway.
Takeaway #3
And finally, the final part to answer this question from Jordie is just addressing that fact that maybe the numbers would be bigger as a result of sending more e-mails as well. To be honest, it goes back to the segmentation, and you may expect that with an e-mail list of that size that we might get more traffic.
But in fact, what I found over time is that e-mail does not make up a substantial portion of the traffic that you're driving to your website. And this is especially dependent on the number of e-mails and the frequency in which you actually send to people. Because, for example, we send e-mails when someone first joins our e-mail list, which is about every other day during the week, or every two days, that is.
We send them relevant content based on what they tell us their biggest need actually is and what their biggest challenge is. And further, we are also launching things sometimes, and every Tuesday we’re also coming out with an in-depth article. So that affects the overall traffic that we're able to generate from email as well.
But as I mentioned, from the time that we started doing these Matt Hacks, we really have seen our traffic grow from 25,000 visits to where it is today, 32,000 visits per month. So that's pretty good. However, just looking at the last 30 days, because we segmented the e-mail list, the numbers were a bit lower. Okay?
So that's the third tip. Don't have unreasonable expectations for what email can do for your traffic. The primary use that you want to think of for email is building relationships with prospective customers or using it as a way to spread word of mouth and promote new content that you have, which again is indirectly working to build that relationship with your subscriber list.
Thoughts?
So, that's it for today's Matt Hack. Leave a comment below. Let me know which of the three takeaways is most compelling to you and how you intend to apply it to grow your business and your sales funnel. And if you have a question that you'd like me to answer in an upcoming Matt Hacks video, pop in your email address and the question in the form directly below this video.
If you're watching this on YouTube, just click the link to go over to our blog and you'll be able to do that. I'd love to hear from you, and I'd love to consider answering your question for an upcoming Matt Hack video.
So, until next time, my name is Matt Ack, always wearing the Matt hat, delivering you your daily dose of Matt Hacks. Keep hustling, stay focused.
Oh, and go see "Avengers: Infinity War". I just got this sweet T-shirt from my girlfriend. You can see Nick Fury, Iron Man, Tony Stark, and Thor is like over here somewhere. I am super stoked to go see it tonight, it's going to be awesome. So go check it out.
Jordie was actually replying to the article where we wrote about "The Avengers: Infinity War Billion-Dollar Funnel." So you might want to check that out as well. I am totally going be nerdy with that tonight.
Alright. Take care. I will talk to you soon.
