List Growth Rate..

Delivery Rate…

Inbox Placement…

Open Rate…

Click-through Rates…

Unsubscribe Rate…

Hard Bounces…

Soft Bounces…

Earnings per Email…

Earnings per Click…

Complaint Rate…

Forward Rate…

Churn Rate…

And on and on…

You may have heard of some of these email metrics or you may even be tracking some of them as part of monitoring your email marketing efforts in your online business.

But I’m here to tell you that there is only one email marketing metric that TRULY matters when analyzing your followup….

How high or low you score on this one metric effects your entire business more than any other.

This metric is your EMAIL SUBSCRIBER ATTENTION!

“Subscriber Attention? What the heck are you talking about Matt…you can’t measure attention!”

Damn right you can’t!

But guess what?

It’s the most important thing that matters when it comes to your email follow-up and how many sales you make online.

Ask yourself…How much attention do you actually control?

You see the usual metrics, like open rate and click-thru rate don’t really give you true insight into whether or not you really have your email subscribers’ attention.

Yes, your email subscribers may be opening and clicking the links in your emails, giving you great email stats to pat yourself on the back for, but is this really turning into sales?

Or are your email subscribers simply curious to see what’s on the other side of your curiosity-evoking email subject line and what’s on the other side of your email links?

How many emails have you opened, quickly scanned, clicked a link to an online sales page and then hit the X button on your web browser? I’m sure more than you can count and I guarantee many of your email subscribers are doing the same!

You see curiosity can work wonders for us as online marketers but it can also be a curse…over-inflating the statistics that we often rely on for making decisions in our online business.

But when you truly control and maintain your email subscribers’ attention the rest of the “commonly tooted” email metrics and stats simply don’t matter!

So how do we measure this mysterious metric of Attention?

Easily….SALES! REVENUE! and PROFIT!

Owning and maintaining the attention of your ideal customer always results in an increase in your sales, revenue and profits.

So how do you gain attention, maintain it and even increase it?

There are two ways to do this:

#1. Understand Your Customer's True Core Desires

What do your ideal customers really want in life? Like deep, deep down inside the core of their being!

What is it that is really important to your audience?

This is often not what you think they want or even what THEY think or say they want.

Our core desires come from deep within and create internal pains that drive use to take life-changing actions, like quit smoking, end marriages or quit our jobs. People are willing to spend thousands of dollars to get rid of their internal pains and the stress they cause them and ultimately achieve their core desire.

It is these core desires and internal pains you as an online business owner must identify and speak to throughout your email marketing. These are what get your email subscribers’ attention!

For example, I have been in the real estate market here in Ontario, Canada since 2012, and my ideal customers are renters who want to own a home but can’t qualify for mortgages. Though their surface desire is to own a home, I have spent years diving deep into understanding the true reason most people want to achieve home ownership, their core desires!

It is NOT to own bricks with a wooden door and a paved driveway leading up to it.

I discovered that people hate the feeling of being less house-rich than their neighbours, family members and peers who own their own homes and are building home equity with every mortgage payment.

They hate the lack of control they have because their landlord is calling the shots.

They experience immense stress due to the thought of receiving an unexpected notice that tells them they have to move out and find a new place to live. They fear having to say good bye to the neighborhood they have grown to love and telling their kids they have to say goodbye to the friends on the street they’ve made.

This typically makes the male in the family feel like a failure and a terrible father.

In my online marketing business, my ideal customers are two types of people.

First there are small business owners who want to take advantage of the Internet to grow their offline business.

Though their surface desire is to get more leads and create more revenue for their business, deep down inside what they really want is to get their message out to more people so that they can have greater impact on the lives of their ideal customers.

Secondly there is what I like to call “cubicle slaves” or “office slaves” who hate their jobs, hate their bosses and hate their commute into work and want to make money online.

But I’ve discovered that deep in their core they just want to live a more fulfilling life, spending more time with their family, kids and the people they love. They essentially seek more time and location freedom.

This is my audience’s internal pains and struggles and their core desires. By speaking to my people with this in mind, every time I write an email I can command their ATTENTION and gain INFLUENCE.

When you begin to do this you will resonate with your ideal customer on a level above and beyond your competition. They will be drawn to you because you understand them better than they understand themselves. They feel like you know them so well that they beginning to like and trust you!

This is how you sky rocket yourself to the level of the go-to expert of their problems in their eyes…and once you reach this status you will own their attention!

Every time an email from you hits their inbox, they will quickly open it (regardless of subject line), consume every single word of it and absorb every ounce of value from it. They will happily take your recommendations, click the links in your emails and purchase your offers without the need for immense persuasion!

Yes, this does require some work. But it’s worth it because without this attention your open rates and click thru rates don’t matter.

#2. Actually Care and Provide Consistent Value

By actually caring about people and providing consistent value gains the attention of your subscribers. Who would have knew eh?

So many people and businesses are scamming and screwing people over that the level of customer skepticism is at an all-time high. By showing people you care, and I mean really care A LOT, they will pay attention to your emails and you rather than anyone else.

You need to make what I call the GIVING SHIFT.

You need to shift away from thinking that you are going to make a bunch of money from selling a ton of products to people online. Stop focusing on satisfying your hunger to make money!

Instead start thinking of how you can GIVE as much value as possible to people.

You have to remember that these people, your future customers, need help with a problem they want solved. Your mindset must be focused on giving them valuable information that will actually help them get closer to their desired result.

This is exactly what I focus on in my online business. The money naturally comes after.

By continuously giving and ultimately helping my prospects, I grow what I call my potential customer’s Trust Account.

Think of this like a savings account in a bank and every time you email someone with valuable content that helps them you are making one more deposit into their Trust Account. As you continue to help them solve their problem via email you are growing this Trust Account.

The larger their Trust Account the more that person will trust you and feel the need to give back to you. You will have created a natural sense of reciprocity with this member of your online audience.

When people see that you actually have their best interest in mind they are so grateful.

It is only at this point that when they open an email from you that presents a paid offer they will be willing to parting with their money in exchange for more valuable, premium information from you. This could be an online training course or consulting or whatever it you choose!

I like to give my online audience (or tribe of followers) high-value information completely FREE of charge 80% of the time. The remaining 20% of the time I present them with the opportunity to access premium information and advanced knowledge from me housed in the form of my high-value paid offers.

So don’t get caught up with vanity metrics like open rate and click-thru rate. Yes, these are important to measure but they will NEVER be more important than subscriber attention.