In readiness for the GDPR coming into force, I took the opportunity to tidy up my mailing list.
I sent four email campaigns between February and May asking people if they’d like to continue receiving my newsletter, The Pips, after 24 May.
In the end, just over 30% of people on my original mailing list opted to continue receiving The Pips, which was a percentage I was really pleased with. (A lot of people tell me they look forward to receiving The Pips each month and really enjoy reading it, but it was reassuring to get cold, hard statistical proof!)
The first post-GDPR edition of The Pips went out on 31 May. The statistics on it are very revealing.
- Over 47% of recipients opened the email; the average for the four emails sent pre-GDPR in 2018 was just under 27%
- Nearly 22% of recipients clicked on a link in the email; the average for the four pre-GDPR emails was just over 7%
I’d always felt it was better to have a smaller list of people who were actively engaged with what you were sending than a huge list of people who, generally speaking, couldn’t care less. The early results suggest I was right to feel like this. Quite simply, the statistics show I lost very few clicks to my site as a result of losing 70% of my mailing list.
