If you aren’t resending your emails to the unopens you are missing out on one of the easiest and most readily available sources of traffic to your content. In today’s post, Mark Sieverkropp, my resident “Sender of Unopens” will share some tips and techniques we use to resend virtually EVERY email at least one time.

This is a guest post from one of my team members, Mark Sieverkropp. Mark has worked for me for almost 2 years and has managed several successful launches and manages many of our day to day operations, including managing the strategy he shares in this post.

How many times have you opened up your inbox, seen an email that you wanted to read and told yourself that you’d go back and read it later when you had a little more time? You might even have “starred” or marked it as important.

Then life happens.  Something comes up.  You have a deadline you have to meet.  A client has an “emergency.” Your kids have a program at school.

And soon a couple days, then a week, then two weeks have gone by, and that email still sits in your inbox unopened…but with every new email that comes in, it gets lower and lower on your list (both figuratively and literally).

That happens to me on a weekly – if not daily – basis.

THIS is why it is so important to resend your emails to the unopens.

Because life gets busy and emails get lost.

And yet very few people actually do it.

In a recent post, Matt shared how a survey he did revealed that only 16% of marketers across the board regularly resent emails to their unopens.

Read all of Matt’s findings on who emails to unopens and the results we’ve seen here.

Unopens and Affiliate Promotions

Resending your emails during an affiliate promotion to the unopens will have a massive impact on not only your optins, but also your affiliate commissions.

Think of everything I mentioned above — the same is especially true during a launch.  If someone is busy and misses your email about a launch video or a free ebook or checklist, resending the email could very well be the difference between making a sale and…well…not making a sale.

As you read through this post, think of how you can apply what you learn to your next affiliate promotion. Remember, take immediate action on what you learn. Don’t wait to apply it.

You Are Doing Your Audience a Favor

One of the hardest things about sending emails to the unopens is getting over your own worries.

What if I bother them?

What if they get upset and unsubscribe?

(Insert irrational worry here)

Regardless of the fears and concerns we all have (yes, even those of us that resend emails all the time still have those thoughts sometimes), you are doing your audience a favor by resending your emails to the unopens.

Remember, they may have had every intention of opening your email and just got busy and didn’t get back to it.

They might have been on vacation, or sick and missed your email in the flood of emails they had to go through when they got back.

And if you do resends using the techniques I’ll share below, they won’t even realize that it’s a resend — so they aren’t going to be any more likely to unsubscribe to your resend than they would be to any other email.

Plus, if they are going to unsubscribe because you’re sending them useful content that THEY asked for, they probably aren’t going to buy from you anyway, so they’re just costing you money by being on your list!

RELATED POST: Afraid of Losing Email Subscribers If You Promote an Affiliate Offer?

The Nuts and Bolts of Resends

Resending your emails to your unopens is a pretty straightforward process.  Whether you’re using Mailchimp, Infusionsoft, ConvertKit, Aweber or any other email marketing program, most of them make it pretty easy to send emails to segments based on whether they opened a previous email or not.

Here’s an example from ConvertKit — they make it as easy as clicking a single button!

However, even though resending to unopens is easy, there are some techniques and practices that will help you get the most out of your resends.

In discussing the techniques below I am going to speak generally, but we have used each of these principles while recruiting affiliates, as well as promoting both affiliate launches and evergreen promotions.

I would highly recommend fitting mailing to your unopens into your promotion plan for any affiliate launch.  Here is an example from our recent launch of Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days To Your Best Year Ever:

Here are 3 techniques that we use consistently.

1. Change the TYPE of subject line you use.  

Some people respond better to a statement, some to a question, and others to a list or “how to” post.  When you resend your email, change the TYPE of subject you use. So if you had a question in the subject, do a statement.  If you try to sell curiosity, try listing benefits.

The idea is to catch the eye of someone who might not have been intrigued by the last subject line…and I can tell you, it WORKS!

2. Try to doing a “Re: reply”.

This only works if you use it sparingly.  We use it about once every few months at most.  If you have a REALLY good subject, you can use the SAME subject line, but put “RE:” in front of it and then add at note at the beginning of the email like “Just making sure you saw this” or “Did you see this?”

This works really well when done every once in awhile because if you’re resending the email, it MUST be important, right?

3. Send the email at an odd time.  

Ok, maybe not even necessarily an “odd” time…just a time that is unusual for your emails.  What I mean is, if you usually send emails on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at 7 am, try sending an email at 3 pm or on a Wednesday or Friday.

The idea of this one is introducing a pattern disrupt.  Truth be told, Matt has gotten me to open his emails when he’s done this because it’s an email at a weird time, so I assume it must be a personal email from him!

You aren’t trying to trick your audience, just getting them to notice something they might normally miss because it’s our of the ordinary.

Bonus:  Send the email on the weekend.  

This goes along with #3 and the idea of a pattern disrupt, but we have found that sending an email on the weekend can greatly increase open rates.  Not only is it a pattern disrupt, but often people aren’t working or at work during the weekend, so they will have more time to look at their emails.

I personally do not send my emails on Sundays, but that is only because I do not work on Sundays, and so I choose not to have emails sent that day…but I would suggest sending an email Saturday or Sunday and seeing what type of open rates you get.

Track Your Results

All of these resends and techniques would be pretty useless if you didn’t track your results. Be sure to track how well each of your resends does — both in opens and click through rate.  This will allow you to adjust when and how you schedule your resends to get the maximum results.

It is also important to remember that these are the people that did NOT open the first email. You should not expect the same type of open rates as you got with the original email, BUT every open is one more than you would have gotten had you not resent the email.

And if you’re doing an affiliate promotion, it could be the difference between getting a sale or not getting a sale.

I know which one I would choose…

Here’s my challenge to you: Find an email that you sent in the last 2-4 weeks and re-send it NOW! And make sure to track your results!

Are you re-sending your emails to unopens? What results have you seen?

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