Each year I send my Annual email message out to my network.
This year I decided to flatten the message significantly by taking out the images and only including the typical hyperlinks that I have in every email signature.
If you want to see the email message, here it is – 2016 Annual Message
Here are the statistics from the past 4 years of annual messages (Google Sheet – Annual Message Statistics)
Some of the statistics I found interesting this year include:
I originally had nearly 13,000 email addresses in the compiled list. However, I went back through the list again to purge out the Excludes and full name duplicates. The list dropped to about 11,850. Still a large increase over 2015.
The % of opens increased again this year by about 25%. This could be a result of the large base in my network.
The % of unsubscribes is about the same. This could be a result of the significant growth of the list this year.
The % of nice replies was similar to last year. I did notice an increase in the number of messages with words like, “I enjoy your annual message.”
The % of message reads increased significantly this year. This I attribute to the large base of connections in my network and the repeat messages.
I only had one person get ‘upset’ that I emailed him this year. I had emailed him earlier with a general email, he asked me to not email him again and I forgot to include his email address in the over all Exclude list.
The % of clicks diminished this year, but again, I reduced the number of links in this year’s message.
There are three primary reasons I send these messages out each year:
- To thank my network for allowing me into their lives.
- To keep my name in front of my network, at least once a year.
- To ‘Poke’ my network for an opportunity to get into a conversation when they are ready.
I have already scheduled conversations with 5 people because of this message and the messages went out only two weeks ago.
I’d love to hear any insights anyone has on this message style and how I could increase the value of them.