Why Nobody Is Reading Your Email Newsletter? + How to Solve it

6 minute read

You spend a lot of time and effort building your email list, promoting your lead magnets and writing informative emails for your subscribers.

Then when the time comes for you to send your newsletter, the results are not what you expected.

A few people (or none at all) opened the email, and your click rate is disappointing.

There might be many reasons why your subscribers are not engaging with your newsletter - let alone opening it or converting into paying customers.

In today’s article, we will break down the most common reasons why subscribers are not opening your email newsletters and what you can do to increase open rates and click-through rates in your email marketing campaigns.

#1: You Purchased a Subscriber List

Buying email contacts is an absolute no-no when it comes to email marketing done right. If you are an entrepreneur and you are trying to launch your online knowledge business, you might not want to spend months growing your email list and acquiring new subscribers organically.

So buying contacts might seem like the easiest and quickest option for you. However, this can actually hurt your business more than you know.

First of all, it goes against privacy regulations and laws such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM, so you could actually get into serious trouble and have your account suspended.

Purchasing email contacts also negatively affects your deliverability and reputation, since there is a higher chance of your emails ending up in the junk folder, or being marked as spam. Not to mention that the contacts you acquire this way did not willingly sign up for your newsletter, so they are simply not interested in your content, making it harder to increase open rates and get them to engage with your content.

Instead of purchasing email contacts, what you can do is build your list organically.

Yes, growing your email contacts organically will take more time and effort, but it is well worth it. To do this, try promoting a lead magnet to your audience, where you are offering a free digital product (such as an eBook, informative PDF, video etc…) in exchange for their email addresses.

Learn all about creating an eBook to grow your email list: How to Write an eBook as Lead Magnet to Promote Your Online Course

#2: You Are Not Offering Enough Free, Valuable Content

One of the most important "email best practices" is to send informative, valuable content to your subscribers.

Doing so will make your email more interesting and if you consistently offer valuable info in your communications, your contacts will associate your newsletter with more helpful content. Your goal is to build a subscribers list of people who are excited to receive your emails cause they know that you constantly offer insightful content that benefits them in some way.

Many times marketers and entrepreneurs make the mistake of limiting their email content to include only sales emails and promotions and may come off as too "salesy" or "pushy" in the eyes of their subscribers.

Sure, email is a form of marketing, but it won’t bring you any results unless your contacts actually open your emails and read what you have to say.

Try to find the balance between sending valuable content and sales emails. Generally, your informative emails should be more frequent than your sales email, to keep a healthy open rate and engage your readers.

Valuable content can be a powerful marketing tool as well! Especially if you are an online course creator, sharing your knowledge is what makes you successful. So by sending informative emails to your customers, you are positioning yourself as an expert in your niche and providing proof of your knowledge and teaching style.

#3: The Email Content is Not What Your Contacts Signed Up For

Another possible reason why your subscribers are not opening your newsletters might be because the content you offer in your emails doesn’t match their expectations.

Try to think about why your subscribers signed up for your newsletter?

What kind of content were you promising them? And are you delivering it?

If you haven’t set clear expectations with your subscribers before they signed up for your newsletter, they might not respond well to your emails.

Our advice is to make things clear before they subscribe. Let them know what your newsletters are going to be about, and specify the frequency of your messages and anything else you deem important (you can simply add a line of text by your signup form on your website). This will help you reduce your unsubscribe rate and decrease the risks of being flagged as spam.

#4: Your Subject Lines Need Improvement

Subject lines are one the most important aspects of email marketing that can affect your whole performance. They are the reason why your subscribers open your emails: if they find the subject line intriguing enough, they will decide to open and read through the email.

35% of people open emails solely based on the subject line, regardless of the sender’s name or the newsletter content. So poor subject lines might be the reason why your open rate is low. Let’s see a few rules to craft bullet-proof subject lines:

Find the balance between intriguing and informative: this might be easier said than done, but a great subject line should be informative about the email content and clearly communicate what the email is about, while at the same time intriguing your subscribers into wanting to learn more and open the email. For example, let’s say that we wanted to promote this blog post that you are reading now in an email newsletter, a good idea for a subject line is: "Here is why no one is opening your emails" (is both clearly communicating the content while hinting at something that the reader is going to find out if they open the email).

Keep it short (readable on desktop notifications and mobile previews): it is important to make sure that your subject line is readable across all devices. So a good practice is to keep your subject line short, so they are perfectly readable on mobile and on the desktop notifications.

#5 You Are Not Focusing on the Customer Journey

Have you ever received an email from a brand where the content made it seem like the brand was so unaware of your actions as a customer that it almost seemed silly? For example, a brand’s email newsletter tells their subscriber why the subscriber should buy something that they actually already bought a few days ago, leaving them feeling like the brand doesn’t pay attention to them and isn’t aware of what is going on.

To be successful with email marketing and your email newsletter, it is necessary to ensure that you are sending the right message at the right time.

Using an email automation tool can help ensure you are providing content tailored to each of your subscriber’s preferences, and sent at the appropriate time for that subscriber. As we’ll discuss in another point below, this can also help to segment your audience so that everyone is receiving the content most relevant and appropriate for them.

#6: You Are Not Consistent With Your Email Campaign Schedule

Another reason why your emails are not getting opened might be because of inconsistencies in how many times you send your newsletter and how frequent that is.

Maybe you grew your email list a while ago and didn’t send any emails in months, and suddenly you start sending emails to contacts who forgot about your newsletter and either ignore your emails or unsubscribe right away.

Or maybe you are simply too busy and the last email campaign you sent was 5 months ago.

If this is the case, try to create a more consistent schedule for your emails so that your subscribers get used to receiving emails from you.

Especially if you pair this with sending quality content on a schedule, your most loyal subscribers will form a habit of expecting your emails on a set date.

#7: Your Subscribers Are Not Your Ideal Audience

Having thousands of contacts in your email list doesn’t necessarily mean that they are your ideal customers and are interested in your business. A common reason why entrepreneurs get low open rates in their email newsletter is simply that they are targeting the wrong audience.

The way you attract subscribers can play a role in this. Maybe you are using paid ads to grow your contacts and you targeting the wrong audience, or maybe you gained your contacts by offering lead magnets that are not the same as your core topic.

A solution to this can be to segment your email contacts to make sure they are receiving content that resonates with them.

#8: Your Emails Are Not Readable on Mobile Devices

Optimizing your email for mobile devices is essential in today’s digital world, where most people prefer using their mobile phones to open and read emails.

So if you are still wondering why your emails have a low engagement rate, this might be the reason

Before you send your next newsletter, test it out by sending it to yourself and check how it looks on your phone: can you open it easily? Does the content adapt to the mobile size automatically? Are colors the same as on desktop? Is the font readable?

Do you want to learn more about using email marketing to promote an online course? Check out these articles from our blog:

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Post Topics: Build and Promote Your Course