Buon Cibo sends one or two emails a week, and more than 60% of the list opens them, week after week.
For context, Mailchimp’s long-running average open rate across all industries is about 21%. Since Apple started counting some opens that never happened (more on that below), many lists now report 35 to 45%. Either way, 60% is well above normal. It isn’t luck. It comes from a handful of decisions, most of them made before anyone subscribed.
It starts with who’s on the list
The easiest way to get a high open rate is to have a list of people who actually care. Before we opened, every ad dollar went to people within about four miles of the store. We weren’t collecting emails from people who would never visit. We were collecting neighbors. (The full story is in how we built a 1,500-person list before opening.)
A smaller list of people who can walk in beats a big list of strangers every time.
Tell people what they’re signing up for
Our signup form said exactly what we’d send and promised no spam. Then we kept the promise. When someone knows what’s coming, and it keeps being worth their time, they open the next one.
Write like a person
Our emails read like an update from someone you know. First person, plain words, short. What’s new, what’s coming, what we’re excited about. No wall of coupons, and no “Dear Valued Customer.”
Pick a rhythm and keep it
Before opening, we sent an email every few weeks. Since opening, it’s one or two a week. That’s often enough to stay on people’s minds, and not so often that they tune out. Consistency matters more than the exact number: after a while, people start expecting to hear from you.
Give every email one job
Decide the one thing you want the reader to do, whether that’s preordering a dinner, grabbing a seat at an event, or coming in to try something new, and build the email around it. One clear ask gets more clicks than five competing ones.
Email every customer after they buy
This one isn’t a newsletter, but it has done more for our list than anything else.
Early on, every customer who bought something got an email from us asking what they thought. We read every reply. The feedback went straight into the food and the service, and people noticed that we listened. That’s how a customer turns into a regular, and regulars open your emails.
It also gave unhappy customers somewhere to go that wasn’t a review site. When something went wrong, we heard about it first and made it right ourselves.
Don’t judge an email on opens alone
Here’s the part most people selling email tools won’t mention: open rates aren’t exact anymore. Since 2021, Apple Mail can load emails automatically when they arrive, which counts them as opened even if nobody read them. That’s a big part of why industry averages jumped.
So opens tell you whether people still want to hear from you. Clicks and orders tell you whether the email did its job. Watch all three.
What to take from this
- Build your list from people who can actually visit.
- Say what you’ll send, and keep your word.
- Write like a person, not a brand.
- Keep a steady rhythm: one or two a week once you’re open.
- Give every email one job.
- Ask every buyer what they thought, and act on it.
- Judge emails by clicks and orders, not just opens.
Sources: Mailchimp email marketing benchmarks; how Apple Mail Privacy Protection affects open rates.