In the year I spent working with Frank Kern, we sent a LOT of emails. But one particular email that we sent stood out from the rest.

We always sent our email campaigns in batches of 3 or 4 emails. Frank had (and still has, I believe) a theory that his list needed to be sent the same email at least 3 times before they would actually read it. I think he was (and is) right. More on that later.

The issue, however, was that we would always see fewer opens and clicks on those last emails.

That’s a fairly common occurrence, so I imagine you’ve experienced the same thing.

During one such campaign, I suggested we try adding a PicSnippet to one of the later emails to see what that would do.

We had sent 3 emails already in this campaign, and as usual, we saw a decrease in engagement:

Email 1: 120k sent, 12% open, 3% click, 1.5 % opt-in

Email 2: 120k sent, 11.5% open, 1.5% click, 1% opt-in

Email 3: 120k sent, 9.5% open, 1.2% click, .9% opt-in

As expected, we saw all of the numbers drop as we went further into the campaign.

Then we sent email 4, with this PicSnippet:

Here are the numbers for that email:

Email 4: 120k sent, 8% open, 3% click, 1.5% opt-in

With a lower open rate, we had the same click and opt-in rate that we had with the first email!

Now, this particular situation comes with the caveat that some of those that opted in after seeing this did so simply because they were impressed by the image itself. We were marketing to other marketers, and some of them just wanted to know how we’d done it.

Either way, there was a distinct increase in the response because we had the PicSnippet in there.