To Spam or not to Spam

So here’s a weird one. We use (even pay for) an official, above board, email service, to allow people to get updates on what we’ve added to Friday Fun.

“Fine” you think. They opt in, they confirm, they reconfirm, they receive the email, they open it, they laugh. Job done!

Not so!

On average only 47% of recipients open the emails they receive from Friday Fun. I’m told that’s great compared with a 37% industry average. But that’s for business selling stuff to punters. We’re not selling anything. We’re giving away fun … for free! How can so many people opt in for some fun, then ignore it? Perhaps their spam filters are getting there first? But for 53% of emails - no way!

So then we find of all the people that open the emails, only 62% actually click on a “funny”. So what do the rest do? Go “Oh yeah some fun I asked for” then delete it? Well apparently so! But why? I give in. Again, the experts say I should be happy as the average click-through rate is 8.9% - but I already explained why that makes no sense.

So maybe they opt-out? No - less than 0.5% do. Maybe they ain’t there? Nope - under 4% bounce.

So here’s the thing - 100s of people who ask for our emails don’t open them. Blah!