Hey, welcome back to the Life Coach Launchpad. My name’s BJ, and I’m here every week talking to you about all the online business things that, as it turns out, need to happen in order to have a successful life coaching business. I’m a business coach. I love to help life coaches make more money, get more clients, have more fun, and to do what they love to do, what they’re meant to do, and that’s coaching.

So, let’s dive right in. This is the second part of a three part series that is the outside business forces that can affect a coaching business. I’ve been coaching and doing done for you services for life coaches now for about five years. And there’s really only been these three times that an outside force has really made a meaningful change in my business or that of my clients.

It’s really only been those three times over five years. That’s. It doesn’t happen that often, but it’s good to be aware of it and have your eyes open so that you can react appropriately. Last episode, I covered how Apple Podcasts, one of the biggest podcast listening apps, changed how they download new episodes.

Basically, if you stop listening to a podcast, after 15 days, they stop downloading new episodes. Previously, the app would download new episodes for you forever, as long as you didn’t unsubscribe. Boom. You as a sub podcaster, you would get a download from them every time you’d release an episode. And that had a, that change had a major impact on some podcasters, especially those who have been at it for a number of years.

The moral, or the takeaway of last episode, and spoiler alert, this episode too, is to keep aiming to make better and better, more and more helpful content. Every time someone hears from you, they should feel like you are reaching out, trying to help them through whatever they’re going through. Today’s Outside Business Force.

It happened back in around September of 2021. Apple changed how they process emails for anyone who uses Apple Mail. And that’s whether it’s on an iPhone, Mac, iPad, any, any Mac, any Apple device. In the past, Apple Mail would only load data from an email when a person opens that email. Email marketing software often added invisible code to measure if it was opened or not.

Starting in the fall of 2021, Apple Mail started preloading the data within an email, including the code used to measure if it was opened or not. This sends back information to all the email marketing programs, showing that Every email is opened. Every email that went to someone who uses Apple Mail, it shows up as open.

Therefore, we can no longer rely on number of email opens and percent email open rates. It used to be that you could watch your percent open rates for how well received your audience was. is in the subject of that email. And then, you watch your percent click rates for how engaging the content within that email is.

Now, the percent open rate is totally skewed. It’s by an unknown number of people who are using Apple Mail. I mean, you could probably find the number of people on your email list who have opened 100 percent every single email and they are likely Apple mail users. They could be really big fans, but most likely they’re gonna be Apple users.

But it really doesn’t tell you how many people within that category are actually opening your emails. So, it really doesn’t help you. You can definitely, and should, still look at your percent opens, because you can still use that number relative to what it was the week and weeks before. You’ll see small bumps up and drops down as your audience chooses which emails to open.

look more enticing to open. That’s actually very good to pay attention to. That is what you, we’re still using percent open. We’re just using it relative to other emails around that time frame. Beyond that, click rate is still the best metric to measure how engaging the actual email itself was. That hasn’t changed.

The goal of the subject is to get them to open the email. The goal of the Body is to get them to perform the call to action. That hasn’t changed. While the number of opens is no longer accurate, you’re still looking for changes in the percent open rate as an indication of what your audience is saying they like and want more of.

When you see an email that has a higher open rate than other emails around that time frame, that’s a great indicator of what to do more of. Out of the last five years of being a coach, I’ve really only seen, seen these three impactful changes to online business. And this, this is the oldest one. It happened almost three years ago.

And that comes out to be about, I mean, for the last three years, it’s about one per year. This one, just like the others, really is neither good news nor bad news for you as a coach. It affects everyone equally. You can still look at the open rate compared to other emails to get a sense of what your audience likes.

At the time it happened, it just felt like we were losing massive control because open rate, it was just such a common metric for us coaches to look at. It was the first place we looked at to see if our emails were being well received. If you have a question about the performance of your email marketing, you can always email me at bj at bj butler.

com. I mean, that’s if it’s simple, if you’re able to get it all down in an email. If you want to go deeper to get my opinion on what something means and what to do about it, set up a free mini session with me on my website, bj butler. com. I’ll talk to you next week with a third and final outside business force that I’m currently working through with a client.

I’ll see you then.

Hey, welcome back to the Life Coach Launchpad. My name’s BJ, and I’m here every week talking to you about all the online business things that, as it turns out, need to happen in order to have a successful life coaching business. I’m a business coach. I love to help life coaches make more money, get more clients, have more fun, and to do what they love to do, what they’re meant to do, and that’s coaching.

So, let’s dive right in. This is the second part of a three part series that is the outside business forces that can affect a coaching business. I’ve been coaching and doing done for you services for life coaches now for about five years. And there’s really only been these three times that an outside force has really made a meaningful change in my business or that of my clients.

It’s really only been those three times over five years. That’s. It doesn’t happen that often, but it’s good to be aware of it and have your eyes open so that you can react appropriately. Last episode, I covered how Apple Podcasts, one of the biggest podcast listening apps, changed how they download new episodes.

Basically, if you stop listening to a podcast, after 15 days, they stop downloading new episodes. Previously, the app would download new episodes for you forever, as long as you didn’t unsubscribe. Boom. You as a sub podcaster, you would get a download from them every time you’d release an episode. And that had a, that change had a major impact on some podcasters, especially those who have been at it for a number of years.

The moral, or the takeaway of last episode, and spoiler alert, this episode too, is to keep aiming to make better and better, more and more helpful content. Every time someone hears from you, they should feel like you are reaching out, trying to help them through whatever they’re going through. Today’s Outside Business Force.

It happened back in around September of 2021. Apple changed how they process emails for anyone who uses Apple Mail. And that’s whether it’s on an iPhone, Mac, iPad, any, any Mac, any Apple device. In the past, Apple Mail would only load data from an email when a person opens that email. Email marketing software often added invisible code to measure if it was opened or not.

Starting in the fall of 2021, Apple Mail started preloading the data within an email, including the code used to measure if it was opened or not. This sends back information to all the email marketing programs, showing that Every email is opened. Every email that went to someone who uses Apple Mail, it shows up as open.

Therefore, we can no longer rely on number of email opens and percent email open rates. It used to be that you could watch your percent open rates for how well received your audience was. is in the subject of that email. And then, you watch your percent click rates for how engaging the content within that email is.

Now, the percent open rate is totally skewed. It’s by an unknown number of people who are using Apple Mail. I mean, you could probably find the number of people on your email list who have opened 100 percent every single email and they are likely Apple mail users. They could be really big fans, but most likely they’re gonna be Apple users.

But it really doesn’t tell you how many people within that category are actually opening your emails. So, it really doesn’t help you. You can definitely, and should, still look at your percent opens, because you can still use that number relative to what it was the week and weeks before. You’ll see small bumps up and drops down as your audience chooses which emails to open.

look more enticing to open. That’s actually very good to pay attention to. That is what you, we’re still using percent open. We’re just using it relative to other emails around that time frame. Beyond that, click rate is still the best metric to measure how engaging the actual email itself was. That hasn’t changed.

The goal of the subject is to get them to open the email. The goal of the Body is to get them to perform the call to action. That hasn’t changed. While the number of opens is no longer accurate, you’re still looking for changes in the percent open rate as an indication of what your audience is saying they like and want more of.

When you see an email that has a higher open rate than other emails around that time frame, that’s a great indicator of what to do more of. Out of the last five years of being a coach, I’ve really only seen, seen these three impactful changes to online business. And this, this is the oldest one. It happened almost three years ago.

And that comes out to be about, I mean, for the last three years, it’s about one per year. This one, just like the others, really is neither good news nor bad news for you as a coach. It affects everyone equally. You can still look at the open rate compared to other emails to get a sense of what your audience likes.

At the time it happened, it just felt like we were losing massive control because open rate, it was just such a common metric for us coaches to look at. It was the first place we looked at to see if our emails were being well received. If you have a question about the performance of your email marketing, you can always email me at bj at bj butler.

com. I mean, that’s if it’s simple, if you’re able to get it all down in an email. If you want to go deeper to get my opinion on what something means and what to do about it, set up a free mini session with me on my website, bj butler. com. I’ll talk to you next week with a third and final outside business force that I’m currently working through with a client.

I’ll see you then.