You lost them at hello

by Charl van Rooyen

With the sheer amount of mails I need to get through today I thought it a good idea to write about them. More specifically how to get your open rate up by paying attention to the line... The subject line.

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to market your company. If you get it wrong however, it could be the most costly decision you’ve ever made.

First off, people treat their inboxes as extensions of themselves. I’ve always believed in asking myself, "Would I mind receiving this mail in my physical post box?” If you think about email marketing in this way, the battle is almost won.

Now take it a bit further, consider this:
You’ve ordered your Skylectric racing set which you can collect from your closest, always efficient post office. You also note that you need to cancel your plans tonight, cause Alonso and your neighbour's 7-year old kid have nothing on you.
You get to the counter, sign your name three times, do the thumb print, and after a couple of minutes the box is in your hands.
But… before you tear it open, you realise that the box reads “Chess board for beginners”. Would you even open the box? My bet is that you’d get the phone and start yelling arb creative words that might cause your mum to haul out her trusty bar of soap...

Sending a newsletter to someone’s inbox that they opted to receive sounds relatively safe, right? This is where the punch line comes in - subscribers want to know what they’re going to read before they even open your email..

How do you tell them? Easy peasy -write it in the subject line.

We’ve all seen some interesting subject lines, and I’m sure you have some real “take the cake” stuff. From the “get free printers and pay less for every piece of paper you print” to the “no subject”. Or my favourite, “your kids will love you”.
Thanks, for the fortune cookie. I’m comforted by the idea that one day, when I have kids, they’ll love me. Been there, got the T-shirt.

So what one liners work, and what lines make people press delete quicker than saying “you must be tired ‘cause you’ve been running through my mind the whole night?"

I’ve found that the best subject lines tell the receiver what’s in the mailer. Simple. Just like the following points to remember:

Leave out any mention of special, free and save or other spam words
Do add your company name
Have a CTA
Be descriptive
Be compelling
Be honest
Keep it short
Read through comments from the last mailer
Compare statistics
Portray the style of your mailer
Test

A study showed that 40% of email marketers felt that testing changes to their subject field had a high impact on their ROI. 45% had medium return and 15% had a low return (Source: MarketingSherpa, Email Marketing Benchmark Survey).

You’ve got 50 characters to win them over. Use them wisely…

2007/07/31 | permalink | comments (2) | trackbacks (0)

Comments

RSS to Email

Get our latest blog posts delivered straight to your inbox.

eMarketing News

Subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter which is packed with interesting eMarketing news, views and other quirky titbits.

January

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

« Dec

Feb »

Recent Comments

Kat on Engaging as a Company

I agree with you. There are some things that should ideally not be discussed by an employee in the public sphere.
Would a communications policy have stopped the said journo from speaking out? He/she must have known a huge risk was being taken? I suppose it's also an incredibly difficult thing to predict. The lack of control can be alarming.
I'm definitely interested in seeing a more specific list, so if you find it do share.
Thank you for your comments :). Here's hoping there's a good coffee shop close to you..
vincent on Engaging as a Company

I guess the mark of a well crafted brand starts at HR policy for new recruits - ensuring that they fit the brand's/corporate's persona. So in that sense yes you could argue that left to their own devices employees would, regardless of an online communications policy, communicate in a style the sponsor would approve of. Not sure if that's always the case but I'm inclined to agree with this generalization.
I think what is also important is that the individual writing within the bounds of a sponsor's site does so in a restricted locale. You can police your own domain if you're a corporate, you can't necessarily control the individuals mouth outside of it. For instance on twitter, personal blogs and forums. Owing to the nature of niche stardom you could argue that the employee comes to represent the brand, more so than that personifies the brand in organic conversation with consumers and would carry significant weight both within corporate sites and externally. Making some individuals very wary to write for their companies at all.
For instance in our not too distant past a prominent journo got the boot for publishing his gripes with his employers and their professional ability - he was promptly fired...He would no doubt have been policed on a company blog but owing to the fact that he chose to represent the company elsewhere he took his brand and the papers brand with him - dragging both through the mud as traipsed on towards epic-failuredom...
So to come back to a point, there is definitely a sense that the policies as listed above are quite ambiguous. Even you yourself suggest that requisite legalese is absent, and I have to assume that such legalese would include a fairly long list of do's and dont's. I have a list somewhere laying about which dictates in a very bland corporate fashion how to represent the brand in public - if I find it I will share it with you.
Perhaps its worthwhile to enforce points like "don't tell secrets" and my own favourite, "for the love of god don't gripe about the boss who you've publicly named online"...
That's my mental-riff for the day, I'm afraid I veered rather uncharitably off course but such is the nature of thought.
Now if only the company I worked for had some decent coffee!!
Kat on Engaging as a Company

Transparency is a key issue - as is allowing people to carve their own niche.
My thinking is that people engage with a personality - an individual personality - in conversation more than with a collective. It's just easier. A company personality surely reflects the people who work there as well as a crafted (constructed?) image that the stakeholders choose to present. While you want engagement it's not the same as speaking to an individual.
There are definite risks involved - but I would lean towards allowing people to carve a niche.
vincent on Engaging as a Company

Couldn't have said it better. Nice post, it is most certainly something corporates are going to struggle with. How much transparency is too much? Who should be allowed to represent a brand and to what extent should the individual be given the opportunity to carve their own niche rather than extol the virtues of the mother - brand?
Who knows. We shall soon see as this year pans out and we find out how the big media players tackle the rise of the cost effective digital media channel.
Kat on Engaging as a Company

It is a tough issue, and I can understand why you've never published. I would encourage you to do so though - you probably have a feeling for when your writing reflects your voice and when it doesn't - and the rewards are worth it.
Thanks for reading Wendy. :)

More photos of the QuirkStars At Play

Name:
Friends of Quirk
Websites:
www.quirk.biz

Skribit: Social Suggestions

Name:
E-mail:
Url:
Comments:
Markup guide: makes text bold // makes text italic // -- creates a link -- (two dashes, no http://)
Remember personal info?
Notify me of follow-up comments?
SPAMCHECK:
Captcha:

You lost them at hello

by Charl van Rooyen

Comments

Subscribe

RSS to Email

eMarketing News

January

Archives

Categories

Recent Posts

Recent Comments