No man is an iland

November 26, 2008

Part I: Length
Part II: Objectives
Part III: Branding
Part IV: Personalization
Part V: Copywriting and inspiration

When sitting down with a subject line to write, most people focus on length and copywriting issues. We've already broadened that scope to include branding and personalization, but what else might be an issue?

What are some final factors that influence those few words that ignite the email experience for subscribers?

Frontloading

Where you can, put your important (key)words at the beginning of the subject line. Apart from any psychological attention-getting impact, many email clients and webmail services limit the display area given over to the subject line.

For example, my Windows Live Hotmail account with the vertical preview pane activated leaves just 28 spaces for the subject line. With the horizontal preview pane, the allocation jumps to well over 100. My Yahoo! Mail account offers 42 spaces. My desktop client 74 spaces in its current setting.

(And two more words: mobile devices!)

If we take our advice on length - as short as possible without compromising on what you want to say - then the subject line structure should be:


So an email marketing newsletter with a key article on subject lines, plus some other news items might look like this:


And a retailer could write:


...rather than...


If the subject line does get truncated, then the more powerful elements are still likely to get seen.

MarketingSherpa recently reviewed a year's worth of their own newsletter subject lines and reached a similar conclusion:

"Sherpa's top subject-line performers showed that pushing the value of a particular newsletter in the first two words was optimal."

Style

Branding subject lines isn't just about putting a recognizable name in there. Your subject line style should match your brand and audience (the two being related).

Experimenting with styles is fine, of course, but take care not to disappoint, disengage, or disenthuse (not a real word) subscribers who signed up with clear brand expectations.

Which is a pretentious way of saying if you're a 250-year old investment bank distributing stock news to retired executives, you might be careful about constantly using subject lines like, "Yo dudes, tech stocks rock!"

Legal compliance

Many anti-spam laws include provisions on subject line content. Check your local laws for details.

The USA's Can-Spam Act, for example, forbids subject lines that are...

"...likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message..."

What's not spam

You probably read somewhere that there are certain words or punctuation that get an email flagged as spam. And experts regularly publish lists of words to avoid.

Your ESP should provide a spam-checking tool that picks up on such problems. And there are standalone tools that do the same thing, such as SpamCheck or tests built into design testing tools.

The rules on what is and isn't acceptable are in constant flux, but the key point is that anti-spam technologies are not your main worry here.

Yes, many anti-spam software packages and email clients still use subject line content as one element in identifying spam. SpamAssassin, for example, does numerous subject line content tests, which you'll find in this list.

But...the importance of content-based filtering is in decline as reputation based filtering spreads. And your bigger challenge is avoiding the human spam filter: the recipients who use the subject line to judge whether your email is spam or not.

If your email's subject looks like the kind of thing a spammer might write, it stands a good chance of being treated as such.

Which means use your common sense: don't write all in capitals, don't include perverse punctuation or misspellings, no excessive use of exclamation marks, no overhyping the offer etc. etc.

Testing

If you've taken in all the advice and resources provided in this series, you might be forgiven for thinking you have subject lines cracked. I wish it were so, but let me quote Ken Magill in an article on email design:

"As is the case with traditional direct marketing, the most effective subject lines are often not the ones a marketer would predict to win."

Two years ago, MarketingExperiments even tested this belief, getting a marketing audience to predict which of three subject lines would perform best. The result?

"...our survey respondents favored the worst performing subject line."

Just about all the factors covered in the series can do with testing to find the right mix, and Chad White has specific suggestions here.

Much has been written elsewhere on testing, so I would merely highlight three testing issues that are often overlooked:

1. Judge subject lines on the right results.

Many people judge subject lines based on open rates. But an "open" is rarely your end goal.

Compare subject lines based on the results that matter: downloads, pageviews, registrations, sales, order size, conversion rates, whatever your chosen measure of success is.

This is important, because research has shown that very specific subject lines, for example, can lead to lower opens, but more clicks.

2. Test subject lines for each segment

If you segment your list, don't use aggregated results to pick a winning subject line. Instead, test subject lines for each segment.

You may find, for example, that long-serving, active subscribers react best to a simple branded subject line that focuses on recognition, but newer or more inactive subscribers need something more benefit-laden to get them to pay attention.

You might even reverse the concept and consider segmenting your list according to how they respond to different subject lines...

3. Test intuitively

If testing is impossible or your list too small to generate meaningful test results, then cast your eye back over past issues and campaigns. See if you can correlate high open and response rates with particular subject line topics or approaches.

Do any patterns emerge which suggest the kind of copy that resonates best with recipients?

Bonus tips

And to bring all this to a close: here a couple of bonus tips worth considering:

1. If you have trouble getting keywords up front, use the colon trick. Example:


...rather than "How to improve subject lines"

2. Leave trailing dots on your subject line to indicate there's even more in the email than you can reasonably fit into the subject line. Example:

Free shipping on top brands: Calvin Klein, Trussardi, Fila,...

3. If you put a brand, business name or newsletter title at the start of your subject lines, you probably use brackets to distinguish this from the actual subject line content. Consider using different types of brackets or name formatting to stand out a little from the rest.

• [EM Reports]
• \EM Reports\
• {EM Reports}

4. Try a little contrariness

In email, familiarity breeds contentment but sometimes contempt: the same subject line approach might lose its performance gloss over time. Consider doing something different now and then to mix things up and spark a little curiosity in subscribers.

OK, this brings our subject line journey to an end. Any additional suggestions or resources are very welcome: click on that comment button and let me know!

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

November 25, 2008

Part I: Length
Part II: Objectives
Part III: Branding
Part IV: Personalization

If you review all that's written on subject lines, you'll discover a number of traits and reactions a winning subject line might contain and/or evoke. Such as...


Good luck with that.

Let's back up a little and recall our original premise: think of a subject line as a work of art. There is no one single formula that guarantees success, but there are approaches and concepts that have proved useful in creating a masterpiece.

We've already covered length, branding and personalization. What other factors can help build that winner?

Copy approaches

Let's take the proposition that the subject line copy is driving interest first and action second.

A recent Return Path consumer survey found that the most effective subject lines for catching attention were those that "...clearly state the offer."

A MailChimp study also found a correlation between higher open rates and email subject lines that "...describe the subject of your email...the best subject lines tell what's inside."

Dialog-Mail found a similar correlation in their study (in German).

There are issues with surveys, but the message is relevant and repeated by many experts: a clear, concise, specific description of the email's contents is a good start. Examples:

• 20% off new t-shirts
• How to lower shopping cart abandonment rates

Then there are the additional elements that enhance interest further and encourage action. This is the realm of the enlightened marketer or copywriter. One who knows the recipients, what they expect, what they want and the right emotional strings to pull on.

Possibilities include making the subject more relevant:

• 20% off new t-shirts for women (when you know the gender of the recipient)

...or an injection of urgency:

• 20% off new t-shirts: sale ends Thursday

...or reinforcing the value of the offer through specifics...

• How to lower shopping cart abandonment rates by 10%

...or appealing to the emotions...

• 20% off new t-shirts: be the envy of your friends
• 20% off new t-shirts: exclusive email offer

What are the hot buttons and trigger words that evoke a positive reaction? How can you strengthen the offer description?

Though this broad approach is well-established it is NOT your only choice.

You may, for example, find value in focusing on curiosity as a driver of action (a factor also highlighted by consumers in the Return Path survey). Can questions or teasers encourage opens and responses?

• Want to boost sign-up numbers?
• Is this our best offer ever?
• What do you think?
• You'll laugh, but...
• Ooops, sorry...

(The danger with the overuse of teaser subjects and similar is that if you don't reward the curiosity effectively, then it quickly turns to animosity.)

As Loren McDonald wrote back in early 2006:

"There is no sure-fire formula...What works in one campaign might bomb with the next. A discount offer should be worded differently from an upsell, and both are different from a breaking-news announcement."

Which is why experts place so much emphasis on testing (see part VI).

Inspiration

If all that seems challenging, there are sources of inspiration out there. For starters you can draw on insights from other parts of your business:

• What are popular blog post titles?
• What calls to action or links drive the most clicks at your website?
• What are your most successful PPC ad headlines?

Then you can look to actual subject line examples:

• What are your competitors doing? Do they seem to have found a winning subject line approach? (Warning: you may be in the test sample that gets the losing subject line or your competitors may not be properly testing or analyzing their subject lines!)
• Chad White's RetailEmail blog includes a regular review of retailer subject lines
• Sundeep Kapur is running through some "subject lines that work" (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
• The Smith-Harmon and eROI blogs regularly showcase good email examples
• You'll find numerous examples and copywriting tips in the articles listed here

OK, so far so good. But we're not finished yet.

There are yet more aspects to consider in the subject line creation process (really), like testing, frontloading, style, legal issues and deliverability concerns. All that to come in the final part of the series...

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

November 24, 2008

If you're leaving the heavy duty email marketing to gift retailers and winding down for the year, here a few new reports, books and guides to serve as lunchtime reading... ($ = for-fee publication)

Landing pages

The Email Experience Council's Email Design Roundtable just put out a Landing Page Checklist ($).

And MarketingSherpa tell me you can get $50 off the price of their seminal Landing Page Handbook ($), provided you follow this special link.

(They have a similar offer on their 2009 Search Marketing Guide ($).)

Subscribing / unsubscribing

The Email Experience Council also released the 2008 Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study ($), which tracks the sign-up practices of 120 top online retailers.

At the other end of the relationship, Return Path published the results of a survey of how top brands handle (or not) the unsubscribe process.

And Silverpop surveyed hundreds of consumers on their attitudes to email and spam. The results and implications appear in this report.

Metrics

MailerMailer's six-monthly Metrics Report came out with numbers for the first half of 2008. It looks at clicks and opens and relates them to such details as subject line length, personalization and time-since-send...

Best practices

"Email Marketing: an hour a day" ($) is the title of a new book from Jeanniey Mullen and David Daniels. I've not read it yet, but have high expectations given the credentials of the authors.

Finally, Listrak published a best practices reference guide, with "221 do's and don'ts."

More book recommendations | Tags: email marketing books

November 20, 2008

This is the third in an ad hoc series giving you the evidence you need to support investment in your email marketing efforts.

[Previous articles were Why do email marketing? and Does segmentation work?]

One common issue faced by the responsible email marketer is convincing colleagues that complying with email privacy and anti-spam laws is not enough.

Legal compliance is not the main criterion used by those who manage incoming mail (ISPs and IT departments) to decide if your email is spam and whether it's worth delivering.

Nor is it a criterion used by recipients to decide if your email is spam or a legitimate communication.

Here's the evidence...

What consumers say

Every survey of consumer attitudes to email reveals that their definition of spam or junk email is now much more than just "unsolicited commercial email."

Spam now includes email that is simply not wanted anymore...even when the recipient actively signed up for that email.

Examples:

1. Return Path asked 1,695 consumers "How do you typically act when you no longer want to receive email from a company?"

• 50.9% said they used the "this is spam" button "sometimes" or "all the time"

Source: "Fourth Annual Holiday Email Consumer Survey" by Return Path, 2008.

2. Epsilon surveyed 119 individuals who had used the "report spam" button:

• 65% equated it with unsubscribing from a sender's emails.

Source: "Email and Spam 2007" by Epsilon, 2007.

3. Silverpop asked 400 consumers what they thought spam meant in relation to email:

• 40% said "email I don't want to receive."
• 35% said "email from any commercial entity"

In the same survey, consumers were asked why they report email as spam:

• 7% said it was due to getting too many emails from a source
• 7% said it was when they lost interest in emails they were subscribed to

Source: "Spam: what consumers really think" by Silverpop, 2008.

4. MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive surveyed hundreds of email users (most of whom were pre-selected users of the "report spam" or "junk" button):

• 21% said they knowingly report email that is not technically spam.
• When evaluating emails from known senders, 50% considered emails that arrive too frequently to be spam and 56% said the same about marketing messages or newsletters that are just not interesting.

Source: Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008, by MarketingSherpa, 2008.

What ISPs say

Yahoo! Mail:
"Operationally, we define spam as whatever consumers do not want in their inbox."

AOL:
"It is really about what the consumer wants. Even if they asked to receive the e-mail, if they do not find value in it, then it is not a good e-mail. We want to make sure that our customers are happy."

Gmail:
"The way Gmail classifies spam depends heavily on reports from our users...To increase the inbox delivery rate of your messages, make sure that all recipients on your distribution lists actually want to receive the mail."

What the law says

Let's take the USA's federal anti-spam law as an example. From Section 8, Effect on other laws:

"Nothing in this Act shall be construed to have any effect on the lawfulness or unlawfulness, under any other provision of law, of the adoption, implementation, or enforcement by a provider of Internet access service of a policy of declining to transmit, route, relay, handle, or store certain types of electronic mail messages."

In other words, an ISP is not obliged to deliver your email just because it complies with the Can-Spam Act.

What deliverability experts say

Laura Atkins, founding partner of Word to the Wise (a consulting group for ISP abuse desks, ESPs and email marketers):
"CAN SPAM lists the minimal standards an email must meet in order to avoid prosecution. CAN SPAM does not define what is spam, it only defines the things senders must do in order to not be violating the act."

Al Iverson, Director of Privacy & Deliverability at ESP ExactTarget:
"...everybody sending any form of legitimate (or sometimes even illegitimate) mail is CAN-SPAM compliant. Citing this as a reason that an ISP should accept your emails is a lot like bragging that your email has a subject line."

"(ISPs)...do not care that your messages are compliant with CAN-SPAM. They care only if your mail is desired by their customers, your recipients."

Anne P. Mitchell, CEO of ISIPP (Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy ):

"...regardless of how you or they feel, an ISP has no obligation to accept your email...Indeed, an ISP can refuse your email for any reason - or no reason at all."

So how do you avoid "spamming?" Follow the new email marketing.

See also: Marketing emails or spam?

Tags: email marketing, spam, spam laws, can-spam

November 19, 2008

OK, time for a rare step back from the practical stuff with a little almost-end-of-year homily.

First the bad news

Email marketing is getting ever more popular. The trend is an old one, but economic worries are accelerating the rush into email:

1. Sherpa's "Marketing and the economy" survey revealed that almost half the surveyed marketers intend to invest more in marketing to in-house email lists in a downturn.

Email marketing and Web 2.0 were the only tactics where more marketers were planning to increase spending than were planning to reduce it.

2. Internet Retailer's holiday sales survey discovered that twice as many retailers intend to cut back on advertising than invest more. But over half those surveyed will increase their email marketing for the holidays.

As customer attention gets scarcer, we tend to shout the message louder rather than make a better message. That approach doesn't work so well in a consumer-empowered online world.

So when people say they will invest more in email marketing, chances are that means sending more email. Not better email.

So it certainly looks like yet more commercial mail is on its way to inboxes, heating up competition for attention and accelerating email fatigue. Let's hope recent successes in the anti-spam world compensate by removing more of the unsolicited stuff.

Now the good news

Many email marketers are still getting even the basics wrong. Just yesterday, Return Path released a report on the unsubscribe practices of some of the USA's leading brands. Here's an alarming quote:

20% of top brand marketers sent additional emails to subscribers after confirming an unsubscribe request...11% of the companies studied emailed subscribers more than 10 days after confirming an unsubscribe request - a violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act.

That's top brands, remember. Sending emails after an unsubscribe request. Which means the recipients will see those emails as spam and likely report them accordingly.

And general performance metrics are still in need of work. Consider the new metrics report released by MailerMailer. Average click rates for the first half of 2008 were 2.73%. Average open rates were 13.2%.

You can argue about measurement issues, but fact is that most emails are ignored. I'll say that again...most commercial emails are completely ignored.

So why is that good news?

Because even at this level of performance, email marketing is successful.

So it's successful AND there is still plenty of room for improvement. That's great news. And the flood of "poor" commercial emails is your opportunity to stand out from the crowd...by applying best practices, by getting creative, and by understanding the principles of the new email marketing.

Here's something I wrote several years ago. If anything, the concept is more valid today than ever before...

"Many online businesses will not recognize the need, or make the effort, or have the skills to improve the standards of their email communications. If you can see the need, make the effort and gain (or buy) the necessary skills, then you can break through the fatigue barrier and benefit from your competitors' failings."

Go for it.

November 18, 2008

Part I: Length
Part II: Objectives
Part III: Branding

As we work our way through the key attributes of a winning subject line, we reach the issue of personalization: do you put the recipient's name in there or not?

You know the answer is going to be "it depends," don't you?

But what are the issues here?

The premise and the problem

You may be familiar with the cocktail party effect, where your attention swivels immediately to a conversation elsewhere if you hear your name mentioned.

Potentially, seeing your name in the subject line gets your attention, arouses interest and implies relevancy. Which is why there is much interest in subject line personalization.

But there are two problems...

First, personal email (i.e. a single message from one person to another) rarely includes the receiver's name in the subject line.

Second, lots of spam puts first names in the subject line.

So the stimulus of seeing your name is counterbalanced by a perception (based on experience) that such emails are either spam or marketing messages.

Many believe this perception problem outweighs any likely benefits.

Jeanniey Mullen, for example, writes:

"...nothing screams out 'marketing message' more than a personalized first name. Would your mom ever e-mail you with a subject line of Jeanniey, I have good news?"

Anne P. Mitchell agrees:

"Even if the recipient recognizes your 'From' address, and realizes that you aren't a spammer - they know that any email with their name on it is likely to be a bulk commercial message."

What do surveys tell us?

Some ESPs have reviewed subject lines to draw out correlations between performance and personalization.

Dialog-Mail found (note: in German) that personalized subject lines were correlated with a much higher open rate, but warned that this is likely due to the novelty factor of the tactic.

MailerMailer discovered the opposite, with open and click rates for emails with only the subject line personalized lower than those for non-personalized emails.

As with subject line length, there seem to be various factors at play...

Culture and audience

A lot depends on your audience and the nature of your "relationship" to recipients. Kath Pay, for example, mentions tests showing that personalized subject lines worked with Brits, but not with Americans or Germans.

The more "personal" the relationship, the more positive the likely impact of name use. And vice versa. As Kath writes in the above post:

"If you haven't got a real 'relationship' with your subscriber as such then maybe personalizing isn't the way to go as they may see it as being artificial or spammy."

Perhaps, then, subject line personalization might work for small B2B lists where the sender is personally known to recipients?

The relationship to message content

Another facet of the idea of context is the relationship to the rest of the email.

The authors of the dialog-Mail metrics report, for example, suggest that personalized subject lines would backfire if the actual email content is clearly broadcast in nature and not specific to the recipient.

That theory gets anecdotal support from two sources.

MailerMailer's numbers reveal that open rates (but not click rates) were higher for messages with subject and message personalization than for message or subject personalization alone.

And research on broader personalization by the University of Illinois discovered that the "...use of personal data in a commercial email can have a negative impact where there is no clear justification for it."

The suggestion is that the more targeted and specific the email, the more likely you are to get a positive response from subject line personalization.

It's a theory supported by Stefan Pollard. He writes:

"Consumer messages that lend themselves better to subject-line personalization are birthday greetings, reminders, surveys, and similar messages: 'A Special Birthday Wish for Stefan from Brand Name Company.'"

"That connection makes sense, tells me what's inside, who it's from, and who the message is about."

Trigger and transactional emails seem better prospects for subject line personalization, then.

If you do decide your emails might benefit, the only true way to find out is - of course - to test. But even if the theory looks promising, there's one more issue to consider...

Data

Adding names to the subject line (or anywhere else for that matter) requires accurate name data. There is little worse than addressing the wrong person in the subject line, or as Stefan puts it:

"If your data is inaccurate or unreliable, your failure will make it clear to readers that you really don't know who they are. That's worse than no personalization."

There are additional problems here. People can input name data during sign-up that really shouldn't appear in subsequent emails (see when email personalization goes wrong).

Equally, you need to think more carefully about placeholder text for those email addresses with no associated name.

Traditionally, marketers use replacement text like "reader" or "valued customer" when names are missing from the database. That looks OK in an email salutation:

Dear reader,
Dear valued customer,

...but looks lame in a personalized subject line:

"Hey reader, it's your birthday!"
"Special birthday wishes for valued customer"

Then there is the question of which name? First, last, username? What's most appropriate? Writing on that very topic, DJ Waldow offers sensible advice:

"Know thy audience"

And, finally, there is the issue of space. As with subject line branding, a name takes away space you might use to greater effect with other copy.

The Scottish football club Celtic famously employ a striker whose name is a challenge for those printing replica shirts: Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. If I was to use a branded subject line with personalization, it would have 52 characters before it even started...

(Email Marketing Reports) Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink

As with length and branding, you need to evaluate the above issues in the light of your own unique situation and decide whether personalization is worth trying. And then use tests to see if you're right.

Now it's time to move on to action words and other elements that define a winning subject line: Part V.

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

November 17, 2008

When we talk of segmenting email addresses, what we're really doing (and rightly so) is segmenting the individuals behind those addresses into groups of people with shared characteristics.

But how about really segmenting the actual email addresses? Grouping together those sharing a common domain, such as gmail.com or creating a separate segment for any of the top four webmail address providers.

How might that help? Here some food for thought:

Spot delivery problems

The numbers you usually see in a campaign report can mask problems at one particular domain. Consider these basic results for a newsletter send:



The total results suggest nothing unusual is happening: an open rate of 18% and a CTR of 20%.

If you look at the results by domain segment, then you see you have an issue at Gmail. Now you can take corrective action for a problem that would otherwise remain invisible.

Interfaces and design

Each of the main webmail services has its own unique interface for displaying emails and its own unique way of interpreting the code in HTML emails. For example:

• Yahoo! Mail has a preview pane, but Gmail does not.
• Windows Live Hotmail does not display alt attributes (so you can't rely on them to compensate for when images don't display). Yahoo! Mail does.
• Gmail's support for CSS in far weaker than that offered by Yahoo! Mail or Windows Live Hotmail.

[For more info on the display idiosyncrasies of each service, see the Email Standards Project website.]

If you understand the nuances of each service, might you make use of that knowledge in your emails?

We know, for example, that Gmail displays contextual advertising next to emails. Can you word your messages to Gmail users to trigger your own ads (should you?) or to prevent competitor ads from showing up?

Custom "whitelisting" instructions

You perhaps use the welcome email to urge people to add the sender to an address book, so that emails that reach the end user go to the inbox and not into the spam or junk folder.

Most such messages are generic in nature, simply drawing attention to the issue or directing people to a website with multiple sets of instructions for various email clients and webmail services.

Segmenting by domain allows you to send specific instructions to the recipient. So Gmail users get info on how to whitelist an address in Gmail.

For more on "dynamic whitelisting" read this recent post by Reagan Taylor.

Could you try something similar with image blocking? Can your alt tags contain domain-specific copy encouraging people to activate images?

Response differences

Online retailers often report different conversion rates, depending on which search engine the customer used to reach the website. Each search engine attracts a different demographic. Might the same apply to email address providers?

The evidence suggests the answer is yes. In 2007, Hitwise reported, for example, that Gmail users were "much more likely to be young, high income, and in the early adopter segments."

Can you exploit that understanding in your emails? (I'm doubtful: click data and other segmenting info is likely more valuable for customizing offers and content.)

Other issues

While all the above sounds promising, there are a few ifs and buts...

1. Designing different emails for different domains is extra work. Is it, for example, more cost-efficient simply to have a universal "safe" design template that displays adequately everywhere?

2. It might seem self-evident that an @gmail.com address is viewed in the Gmail interface, but it's not always true. Many of the top webmail services allow automatic forwarding to another email address or let users retrieve email into their desktop client.

So while most addresses are viewed in the expected venue, this won't always be the case. Not to mention that different browsers (think mobile devices) will display website content differently anyway.

3. Customizing for a recipient domain can never be perfect as the end user has an influence over interface layout and display settings.

Yahoo! Mail users, for example, can adjust the size of the preview pane. Windows Live Hotmail users can toggle the preview on and off or decide whether it should appear below or to the right of the inbox window.

As always, you would need to test to see if domain segmentation has any value for you.

Thoughts?

More tactics | Tags: email segmentation, gmail, yahoo mail, windows live hotmail

November 13, 2008

What a useless, cowardly expression to use: "it depends..."

It offers no answers, no quick fix, no actionable advice, nothing.

N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

And it's the most powerful two words in email marketing.

Because while there are some consistent rules out there, many decisions you take about your email marketing program really do depend on characteristics unique to that program, your organization and your target audience.

Here are just a few of the questions that (initially) deserve an "it depends":

• When is the best day to send my emails?
• When is the best time of day to send my emails?
• How often should I send my emails?
• How long should my copy be?
• Should I brand the subject line?
• Should I personalize the subject line?
• What open and click rates should I be happy with?

The problem is we all like clarity.

So here goes:

Sunday, 8.45am, Once a week, About 300 words, Yes, No, 25% and 10%

You can take false comfort in clear answers. But these answers are based on data and experience that has no relevance to the actual situation you find yourself in. So they are unlikely to get the most out of your efforts. They may even be counterproductive.

Or you can accept the correct answer to all those questions: it depends.

A willingness to confront the "it depends" challenge implies flexibility and a willingness to seek the solutions best suited to your own circumstances.

"It depends" is an invitation, an opportunity...to search for a more accurate, more relevant, more profitable answer to key questions.

So...

1. Take the rules, suggestions, estimates, statistics and advice on the issue in question.

2. Review them in the context of your own understanding of YOUR emails, YOUR organization and YOUR audience.

3. Draw out what seem like the best answers for YOUR situation.

4. Where practical, take the top options and test to see which truly is the best (because if we were clever enough to know in advance, we'd be drinking cocktails on a private Caribbean island by now).

5. And, if you can't test, take your "best guess" answer and run with it.

Saying "it depends" isn't the cowardly option after all...it's the brave and right option.

Related article:
Ask the right questions

November 11, 2008

So we cleared up the issue of length in Part 1 and then discussed what the subject line must achieve in Part 2. Which leaves us with the small matter of what, exactly, you should put in a subject line...?

Let us begin with a common question: should you include your brand/business name?

Well, if a core aim of the subject line is to ensure your email is recognized, putting some recognizable name in there makes intuitive sense.

It might be your brand, the newsletter name, your business name...whatever is likely to trigger that recognition most easily. Here some real-world examples:

• [SherpaStore] Receipt for Order : 10084963
• ClickZ News: IMC2 Lays Off; Google's Russia Deal Blocked
• [SurveyMonkey.com] Account Password Request
• Your Amazon.co.uk order has dispatched
• Email Insider: Six Key Email Marketing Trends You Cannot Ignore

Survey results certainly seem to support the idea.

Back in 2006, Silverpop found a correlation between branded subject lines and higher open rates.

More recently, MailChimp evaluated the results of numerous A/B tests and concluded:

"Subject lines with company names in them did better."

So you'll find experts recommending the practice. The folks at EmailGarage, for example, recently wrote:

"Name recognition is the most powerful element in your subject line."

(You can sense a "but" coming can't you?)

I, too, am a fan of branded subject lines. But...

Like many issues in email marketing, they involve compromise. The more space you take up with a name, the less you have for communicating the content of the email and enticing interest and action (our other two subject line objectives).

Equally, recognition is not achieved through the subject line alone. Recipients viewing your email usually see a sender line, a subject line and (commonly) either a snippet of text or a preview pane.

All those visual elements combine to induce recognition.

So you might argue that a clear sender/from line and appropriate branding in the preview pane can do the heavy lifting on recognition, freeing the subject line to focus solely on generating interest and action.

Indeed, you'll find few retailers branding their subject lines, presumably for these two reasons.

So what's right for you? Here's what you need to think about...

The role of recognition

Branded subject lines make most sense where recognition is itself the prime driver of interest and action. Two clear examples spring to mind.

First, we know that people open transactional emails largely as a matter of course (I want to know if the order is correct, what my new password is etc.).

So you don't need to write enthusing copy in the subject line. You just need to get people to see that it's a transactional message from you: hence the value of branding that subject line together with a clear statement of the content. For example:

"McAfee Subscription Renewal Confirmation"

Second, if you have a reputation for always delivering useful, valuable content, then your main priority may also be to ensure people recognize your emails.

Top newsletter publishers, for example, sometimes report that subject line changes make little difference to open rates.

It's because people's positive experiences with that newsletter and/or the sender cause them to open those newsletters whatever the subject line says. (Once they recognize them.)

The from/subject/preview combination

If your preview pane, preheader text, and from line are all set up to allow recipients to quickly recognize the email or sender, then you have more freedom to ignore the recognition issue in your subject line: you can leave out the name.

An alternative is to take a dual name recognition approach. Many informational newsletters, for example, often use a combination of "publisher name or website" in the from line and "newsletter title" in the subject line. For example:

Sender: MediaPost Publications
Subject: Email Insider: Who's In Your Fab 5 Inbox?

Formatting

If you do include a name, then a good practice is to highlight it with some kind of brackets. This helps it stand out and also allows people to refocus on the actual content of the subject line much faster. Some examples:

• {Inside Lyris HQ}
• (Email Marketing Reports)
• [EmailSherpa]

And one that turns the idea on its head:

[Invoice] Litmus monthly subscription

Frontloading

If recognition is important, then put the recognizable name at the front of the subject line. It's an almost universal practice whose value is also confirmed by the MailChimp study, which reported that test results were best...

"...when the company name was near the beginning of the subject line"

Space

The smaller the recognizable name, the lower the opportunity cost of branding your subject line...the less space you take away from the subject line's actual message.

If your company name, brand or newsletter title is too long, then consider acronyms and short forms, provided they are truly recognizable: [UN] instead of [United Nations], (HP) instead of (Hewlett-Packard).

Testing

(You'll see the t-word a lot in this series.)

Your mileage may vary because each list, sender and audience is unique. While all the above can help you weigh up the pros and cons of branding your subject line, only a rigorous test will give you a definitive answer.

I've seen many senders switch from branded subject line to non-branded (and vice versa), presumably after testing to see which worked best.

OK, so much for branding. Next up: personalization.

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

November 10, 2008

There's a storm headed our way.

A deluge of quick-fix promotional emails fed by the urge to capture holiday sales, meet annual targets and do "what everyone else does."

Nothing wrong with promotional emails of course. They are the lifeblood of email-driven sales. But you can sense the nervousness in the email world.

Will we end up with exhausted, unresponsive lists...drained of ever last drop of interest by email fatigue?

Or are we cultivating a coupon culture that sucks the life out of your brand and margins...with subscribers trained to ignore anything that doesn't come with a large double digit "% off" in it?

Two weeks ago, we wondered if a content newsletter approach might have value in defeating these twin risks.

Others are speaking up, too...

Dylan Boyd writes:

"So why are you always concerned about your immediate sales? Sure someone is always in market somewhere, but you need to be ready to build a relationship first."

And Stephanie Miller adds:

"...email also works great when providing value: Information, helpful tips and timely offers can boost response and protect margin"

But you're not convinced, right? So how about a real-world example?

One pet supplies company switched focus from promotional to informational content and ended up with more clicks, more conversions and bigger orders. Read the case study before it disappears behind a payment barrier.

The lesson is not that one approach is better than the other, but simply that there is more than one approach to email marketing. Discounts and coupons are not your only option.

November 06, 2008

Part I looked at subject line length to conclude that a winning subject line is as short as it can be while still achieving its objective.

OK, so what IS this objective? And how do you reach it?

This post answers the first question, while the rest of the series tackles the many factors involved with the second.

Subject line objectives

You can't set about writing a subject line until you know what that subject line should achieve.

You would probably say something like:

The subject line should get people to open the email.

Yes.

And no.

If that's all there is to it, you'd see more subject lines like these:

• Your last purchase has a dangerous defect
• We overbilled you, $100 gift voucher enclosed
• We sold your credit card data by accident

Clearly, just getting people to "open the email" isn't your real purpose. Instead, your subject line is looking to generate RIA: Recognition, Interest, Action.

[Thought it was time for an acronym. We all like acronyms.]

That's NOT the same as getting people to open up an email.

Recognition

People need to recognize that the email comes from you and is something they're comfortable receiving.

Why?

First, because any email they don't recognize is likely to get ignored, deleted or (worst of all) reported as spam.

Second, if they recognize the email, then all the positive expectations and experiences you built up through your brand, website, welcome emails or past email campaigns now come into play and encourage the reader to explore further.

Various bits of an email campaign contribute to recognition, but the top three are sender name, subject line and what you put at the top of the content (the part that likely appears in preview panes).

So the subject line must contribute to recognition.

Interest

This is your "getting people to open" part. Most recipients are scanning down the subject lines in their inbox and subconsciously asking the same question as they pass each one:

Is it worth looking at what's in this email now?

Your subject line needs to give them a reason to answer that question with a yes.

But there's a second point.

The interest you generate must be rewarded by the actual content of the email. You want to raise expectations that you can meet (or exceed). You don't want to raise expectations and then disappoint.

Which is why deceptive subject lines are out (and usually illegal anyway) and why vague or teasing subjects need careful handling, as we'll see later in the series.

Action

The ultimate goal of your emails is not to get people to look at them, but to get them to take some kind of action: a click, a purchase, a reply, a download, whatever.

The primary aims of the subject line are to create recognition and interest. But it can also pave the way for the action you're looking for.

The right subject line can, for example, help create a sense of urgency, desire, curiosity etc....all of which are the first spark in the thought process that ends with a click on the right button or link.

You have to be careful here, though. You don't want to weaken the subject line's capacity to reach the other objectives by going for a hard sell right away.

As a recent MarketingExperiments report on compelling headlines concluded:

The objective of your headline is not to sell, but to connect with your reader...when we're focused on the end result, we tend to ask headlines to do too much - and run the risk of overshooting the mark.

Recognition. Interest. Action.

Now we know what we want to achieve, we just need to pull together the factors that help us do so. The story continues in Part III.

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

November 05, 2008

Creating a subject line is like creating a work of art.

While there are some guidelines a budding artist can follow, there is no "art creation" template that guarantees success. Painting by numbers produces no masterpieces.

So it is with subject lines: there is no simple template to follow to ensure higher responses to your emails. Which is a shame, because what you put in the subject is critical to email marketing success.

What you can do is develop an understanding of the factors that contribute to a winning subject line, and then draw them together to develop "best guess" subjects to try out in practice.

So what are these factors?

Today sees the first of a couple of posts which answer that question. And we begin with perhaps the biggest question: how long should my subject line be?

Subject line length

"Small is beautiful" was always the mantra of subject line length. MailChimp, for example, reviewed a host of campaign stats and found that:

"Shorter subject lines seemed to work better than long subject lines"

...an idea supported by data collected by another ESP, MailerMailer.

But other surveys draw different conclusions.

Emma (also an ESP) checked their own newsletter stats, for example, and discovered:

"...our longer subject line boasted both higher open and clickthrough rates than its shorter counterpart"

Then Alchemy Worx produced data which appeared to show that longer subject lines were outperforming shorter ones.

Most recently, dialog-Mail released an open rate study confirming the idea that shorter is better, but which also suggested that, for example, nine word subjects performed comparably to three-word ones.

So what's going on?

The secret lies in an analysis of the Alchemy Worx report: there is no magic subject line length.

Our desire to simplify led us to seek the ultimate answer to life, the universe and emails: how many characters should the ideal subject line contain (42?)

But subject line length should not be driven by some arbitrary word or character limit.

The effectiveness of the subject line depends on many factors. If you have length as your top priority, you risk compromising on other success factors driving response.

So we might say shorter is generally sweeter. [Not least because many email clients limit the number of characters they will display in the subject line field on the webmail interface, mobile email device or PC.]

But it is still just one factor.

And there will be many occasions when a subject line must be "longer" to contain the words and elements needed to drive a particular response from a particular kind of email to a particular email audience.

Which explains why studies often come up with different results on optimal lengths.

For example, a short headline is often enough to communicate the value of opening a promotional email featuring a single offer.

But informational newsletters might need longer subjects to adequately communicate the value of opening.

So the new length mantra is this:

Use as few characters as you can while still allowing the subject line to do its job

Or put alternatively:

Don't sacrifice on message just for the sake of keeping the subject line short

But what are these other factors, words and elements that impact your subject line length and success? The story continues in Part II...

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

November 04, 2008

Many readers may be distracted today by such trivialities as the destination of the US Presidency. So let's avoid the serious stuff and remind ourselves that not everybody can be reached by email.

(And even if they can, not everybody should be reached by email.)

Here's a select list of anti-email celebrities, with a US Government focus in honor of today's big event in the USA:

• Michael Chertoff, United States Secretary of Homeland Security: said in 2006: "I don't use e-mail. One reason is when you write an e-mail, you have to be mindful of the fact that nothing ever disappears." (reference)
• Umberto Eco, renowned author and philosopher was once quoted as saying (in the New Yorker, albeit in 1995), "I don't even have an E-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages." (reference)
• Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General until 2007. (reference)
• Professor Peter Higgs: that multi-billion dollar toy the physicists just built is looking for a particle named after him. (reference)
• US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. According to a 2005 Washington Times article, she "...prefers personal contact to the cold computer screen." (reference)
• The Internal Revenue Service. (reference)
• Former US President Bill Clinton, at least according to a Vanity Fair article. (reference)
• Professor Donald Knuth, author of "The Art of Computer Programming." (reference)

November 03, 2008

Last week, we wondered if popup subscription boxes justified a comeback. The premise behind reconsidering popups is the tacit admission that many people just don't "see" the subscription form or sign-up links on your website.

So if the real problem is the invisibility of your sign-up box/links, what else can we do?

There's a remarkable paucity of advice on designing subscription forms / links / copy to get attention, though I daresay there is much to learn from broader web design concepts.

But how about using animation to draw attention to those sign-up features?

We read continually about the popularity and acceptance of video and animation on websites, yet you don't see such tactics used to highlight the opportunity to sign up for email.

I was alerted to the possibility on visiting the website of e-newsletter expert Michael Katz, where he "walks" onto the screen, introduces the site and points you right at the subscription link. Go see it in action!

I asked Michael why he decided to introduce the animation. Here's what he told me:

"I think that adding video, particularly in full body, non-talking head format, is a nice way to add some personality and a personal touch to the site. And, because it's so attention-grabbing, it's an easy way to draw attention to a particular aspect of a web site."

"In my case, where getting people to sign up for my e-newsletter is my site's primary purpose, it allows me to mention the newsletter and even show them exactly where on the site they'll find the sign-up button."

As with Popups 2.0, the trick is likely to be in implementation. All the issues we discussed for popups (triggers, frequency caps, impact monitoring etc.) apply equally here.

Anyone seen any good examples? Is this an idea that could / should catch on?

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