Here’s Why That’s a Really Big Deal

Most businesses would be thrilled with a 20% email open rate. We just looked at the stats on one of our automated welcome emails for our free payroll training sample, and the numbers stopped us in our tracks:

• 373 emails sent,
• 92% opened, and
• 45% clicked through to explore further.

For context, the average email marketing open rate across most industries sits somewhere between 20% and 35%, and a “good” click-through rate is usually anywhere from 2% to 5%.

We didn’t just beat those numbers, we roughly tripled the open rate benchmark and blew past the click-through benchmark by a factor of ten or more.

So what’s actually going on here? It’s not luck, and it’s not really about the email itself. It comes down to three things working together: the landing page that captured the lead, the call-to-action that got them there, and the lead magnet that made the offer worth opening in the first place.

It Starts Long Before the Email Gets Sent

By the time someone receives an email like this, from us or from anyone, the real work has already happened.

• They found a landing page (in this case, promoting our free payroll training),
• the page made a clear, specific offer (a free introduction to payroll training manual), and
• there was an obvious call-to-action to get it.

That’s the entire point of a good landing page: it isn’t there to sell everything at once, it exists to make one small, low-risk ask, in this case, “give us your name and email, and we’ll send you something genuinely useful for free.”

When that ask is specific and the value is real, people follow through, and more importantly, they actually open what you send them next.

The Lead Magnet Has to Actually Be Good

A 92% open rate on the very next email tells you something important: people didn’t just grab the freebie and forget about it, they were interested enough in payroll training to keep paying attention.

That’s the job of a proper lead magnet, not a vague “sign up for our newsletter” ask, but something with genuine, specific value, in this case, a real introduction to payroll training manual covering rosters, timesheets, pay runs, STP and more.

If your lead magnet is generic, your open rates will be generic too. If it’s specific and genuinely useful to the exact person you’re trying to reach, the numbers can look like this.

The Part Everyone Forgets: Nurturing the 97% Who Aren’t Ready Yet

Here’s the number that matters most in all of this, and it’s not the 92% or the 45%. It’s a stat we talk about constantly in our digital marketing training: only around 3% of your website visitors are ready to buy from you right now. The other 97% are curious, comparing options, or simply not ready yet.

That 97% isn’t a lost cause, it’s your entire future pipeline, but only if you actually nurture it.

That’s exactly what an automated welcome sequence like this one does. It doesn’t try to sell a payroll course in the first email. It delivers genuine value (the free manual), builds a bit of trust, and gently keeps the conversation open, so that when someone is ready to enrol, whether that’s next week or next year, they think of us first.

If you’re only measuring success by immediate sales, you’re ignoring 97% of the people who found you.

The businesses that win long-term are the ones who keep showing up with value in the inbox, consistently, until their audience is ready to act.

Want to Build a Sequence Like This for Your Own Business?

Getting these kinds of numbers isn’t about being lucky with your subject line, it’s about the whole system: a focused landing page, a genuine lead magnet, and a well built automated nurture sequence behind it. Our Email Marketing Communications Training Course walks you through exactly this, audiences, campaigns and reporting, so you can build (and actually measure) a sequence that keeps your own “not ready yet” leads warm until they are.

And if payroll administration itself is what you’re trying to learn or teach, you can find our full range of Payroll Training Courses in Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks here.

Got an email sequence of your own that isn’t performing the way you’d like? Get in touch, we’re always happy to look under the hood.