I’d be interested to hear how others have tested their readership… add comments below… thank you.

I’ve had a database of email contacts from some 16 years with many receiving my communications for much of that time… I always get a few unsubscribes each time I send out and the current database stands at just over 4300… since March 29th I have sent an average of 1 email every 10 days.

New year, new ways of thinking and I decided to see if folk are really listening with the plethora of emails landing in their inbox or would they rather just come and find my blog when they feel like having a read… the “purest” inbound approach as I see it…

Entitled “New Year… New Marketing Rules…” I sent it out at 9am on Saturday morning.

And current stats show:

• 4370 sent out
• 955 opened
• 129 unique clicks
• 48 opt-out
• 33 clicked on main link to register
• 45 bounced
• 13 re-subscribed!
• Representing a 0.002974% uptake…

I was anticipating this level of response, underlining my current thinking (last few years)… that for a small business, inviting people to follow your blog directly is far more productive and it has the added benefit of giving them something solid to visit… your online home.

Sunday evening I pulled down a list of people who had opened at least 30% of my emails since October and this gave me 1568 people.

I sent them a brief message, inviting them to follow my blog…

Hi… I’m going to focus my Social Media Directors’ blog on Marketing Automation… I’ll be pushing out my own news plus blog posts by experts in the space… so if you’d like to tune in then accept this invitation to follow the blog… we’ll also be sharing jobs and projects that we’re made aware of so it could be a valuable resource… click accept, you know you want to 😉 Thank you. Jon

So far 37 people have accepted my invitation… 0.023596% = nearly 8x as many as via the email.

I’ve also literally just invited 82 new LinkedIn contacts, who don’t get my email newsletter, to follow the new blog… let’s see how that rolls out…

Hi, thank you for connecting on LinkedIn… my own Marketing Automation studies reinforce the key engagement factor of minimising the effort of others… with this in mind I’d like you to accept this invitation to follow my blog newly titled “Social Media Directors Marketing Automation Network” through which I will share thoughts & ideas, not just my own, I’d like you to submit blogs for inclusion… we’ll also feature those looking for new opportunities and projects… thank you in advance… Jon Davey

Next job… to send a 2nd message to the email database saying “Last orders please” with a more impactful picture… or no picture… see if that gets more of a reaction. And then test the Social Media Directors blog invite at 10am during a working day to see if that works better. In fact, run alongside each other… I’ll let you know how that goes.

Thank you.

Jon