On The Subject Of Subjects

If you don't give your email subject  lines serious consideration than your marketing campaign could well be a fizzer.

Recent research from Adestra suggests that subject line length and specific words and phrases have a major impact on your email marketing success or failure.

They took a a random sample of email campaigns, each of which were delivered to more than 5000 recipients, giving a total volume of 932 million emails sent over a six month period. As the average in one industry may not be to another they split the data down into six key industry groups – Publishing,
Events, Ecommerce, Charities, B2B and B2C.

Key Findings:

• For the e-commerce sector, character and word count results are paradoxical. The choice is clear – shorter subject lines drive clicks, and longer subject lines drive opens
• Subject lines with 70 characters provide give a significant boost click-throughs
• For Events the best click through rate comes from subject lines with 15 words/120 characters upwards
• Publishers should realise that a higher word count delivers more opens and click through rates
• If you are a Charity running a donation campaign then short subject lines are critical as these drive both opens and response
• Rather strangely they report that mentioning ‘kittens’ will increase your opens by 41% but if you mention 'children' the opening rate will drop by 28%
• For B2B's the more words the better with anything over 16 words delivering on both opens and clicks
• For B2C's a 20 word subject line appears to be clear winner

Parry Malm at Adestra who authored the report says: “Our new subject line research has produced some incredibly interesting stats. It’s only one aspect of your email marketing arsenal, but when approached in the correct way subject line optimisation can prove to be an effective, and quick, tactical winner to help drive response rates.”

Open publication 

Although interestingly these findings seem to be at complete variance to recent research by email provider MailChimp.  Their statistics from their own system released in September suggests that subject line length means absolutely nothing.

Mailchimp's analysis of 12 billion emails shows that as your subject line gets longer, nothing happens

Ian Creek of Econsultancy suggests that one email is never enough. He recommends this campaign schedule:

• Send the first email explaining the offer in full HTML. 
• Send a second follow-up email in a plain Outlook style from a named sales contact. 
• Send a final reminder of the offer (day before the offer ends), again this can be from the sales contact. Simple-not over-designed. 
• If you’re really cheeky you can even send a final email the day after the offer ends with a ‘special extension’.

Related articles

• This Just In: Subject Line Length Means Absolutely Nothing

Open Sesame

This magical phrase from the story Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves may well  resonate for budding email marketers.

The place of email in the online marketing mix remains a contested topic but it most definitely has it place.  The seemingly depressing statistic is the opening rate for such communications and this can be off-putting until one realises that you measly 25% is consistent with the industry standard you represent.

Take this recently released 2012 Silverpop Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study, for example.

The chart shows nonprofit emails have an average unique opening rates of just 21.2%.  It so happens that I have an interest in this particular figure as since 1998 I have been publishing a museum news site and send out weekly emails to subscribers.  While my opening rate is usually above 23% the aim is to get results that are in the upper quartile.  Being average is not good enough.

More important still is the Click Through Rate.  The simple act of opening an email is no guarantee of capturing a reader's interest. The better news is that while email opening rates are falling the CTR is increasing.

It is therefore essential to be using a good email marketing programme that has a robust set of statistical reports built in.  There are several in this category but one of the simplest to use (and the most friendly) is MailChimp.

One of the latest trends that is yielding very good results are email programmes that combine the functionality of social media platforms.  CheetahMail for example, has added Pinterest functionality to some of their email campaigns so that consumers can link products listed in a promotional email directly to their Pinterest pin boards. The result - 11% higher opening rates.

In the case of a furniture design enterprise the results of using this approach also showed:

• A 2.8% increase in click-to-open rates
• A 15%+ increase in Pinterest followers within the first week of deployment
• A 33% increase in pin board activity

Related articles

• Some experts say email marketing is dead: true or false?
• Survey Reveals Changing Role of Email Marketing
• E-mail Open Rates Declining, Click-Through Rates Rising [Study]

Is There Still A Place For Email In 2011?

As this presentation shows, email is predicted to grow from 2.9 billion accounts to 3.8 billion by 2014.

So although social networks are clearly the fastest growing communication technology, email remains a potent weapon in the digital marketing arsenal.

Business receive twice as much email as they send in a day and spam remains a constant problem. 

The rule of thumb is to try and send out 70% of  useful or fun information and 30% which could be termed hard-sell.

All email 'blasts' should integrate social media tools such as Facebook 'Like' buttons, tweet, or Stumbleupon options to push content beyond the original recipient.

Email should have click through options to build engagement and do send a welcome message or series of messages to engage new email subscribers.  It is surprising how few businesses (1%) do this at present.

A prime motivation for people to give their email address to a company is to receive discounts and promotions. More than half expect to  get a "freebie" in exchange for their address.

Old habits die hard and 58% of consumers still start their day by reading their email.  So time your email releases to hit them fresh each morning, before the drudgery of the day dilutes the effectiveness of the message.

Related articles

• Email Marketing Is Changing - Don't Get Left Behind (fathomseo.com)
• Email's Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated ... Again (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• 2011 PR Trends: Email and Social Engagement (proactivereport.com)
• Email, Social Media To See More Marketing Dollars In 2011 (webguild.org)