Effective Email Subject Lines: Begin with the Audience

I’m a media planner and buyer, predominantly, but in that role my duty to my clients extends to doing everything I can to ensure each campaign is a success. And while I have no control over the creative and messaging delivered for trafficking I feel it is important to throw my two cents out if I feel results may be adversely affected by poor messaging, creative, etc. Subject lines for email campaigns is one area where I find I am always inserting myself.

It seems that subject lines are more of an after-thought either on the part of the creatives who wrote and designed the email content or on the part of the particular campaign owner. More often than not I receive message content and then have to inquire as to the subject line because it isn’t included with the assets. Then a back-and-forth ensues and the client and I posit subject lines and to one another until we settle on one (or multiple if testing).

The problem with this method is that we are working backwards. The subject line should have been at the forefront of the creative process — at the beginning — because the subject line is the trigger that sets up the entire message to follow. Leaving the creation of the subject-line to the last-minute and in the hands of people who did not nurse the message itself into fruition can result in a subject line that doesn’t lead into the message seamlessly.

When I used to write direct mail copy for a living I always began the creative process with the outer envelope. This was the piece that counted most; it had to attract attention, address the concerns/desires/needs of the recipient, and be compelling enough to drive the recipient to open the envelope. Same with email subject lines although subject lines for emails are much more difficult to write given the limited space, lack of graphics, intense competition, and much more. Therefore, Step 1: begin thinking about the subject line once you’ve settled on your offer, target audience, and call-to-action. You don’t have to have it set in stone by any means, but by taking some stabs at it early you’ll find that the writing of the message itself is easier and the two components work better together.

Now to the nitty-gritty. I kind of had to get that off my chest because I am appalled with how often the subject line is thrown out last-minute as though it were an after-thought.

Address the audience

What do I mean by that? Well if you ever watched the Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason you’ll remember the episode where Gleason and his neighbor, Ed Norton (played brilliantly by Art Carney) were learning to play golf. Ralph (Gleason) tells Ed that the first step is to “address the ball”. Norton takes position with the club in front of the ball and says, “Hello ball”. I don’t mean that anymore than Ralph meant what Norton perceived.

Address the audience means you want it to be clear to the recipient that the email is for “him”. This is accomplished via the benefit you hint at, by a word specific to his needs/desires/concerns, by stating a job function, etc. For example:

Subject line: Seven steps to HR Nirvana

In this subject line I’ve specifically used a keyword that addresses the recipient, who is a Human Resources manager. (I’m writing these subject lines on the fly and they don’t attach themselves to any particular offer or message. They are to illustrate the point made.)

Another example:

Subject line: Workplace nightmares and how to avoid them.

Both subject lines address the audience via keywords that are common in the human resource vernacular. Both also promise a benefit and leave a little mystery to “tease” the recipient into opening the email to learn more: “Nightmares” and “Nirvana”. Subject lines must TEASE. That’s difficult to do when you consider another important attribute of an effective subject-line: LENGTH.

Keep it simple and short

While “keep it simple” applies to all ad writing it particularly applies to this topic. There are technical and other realities that demand it. Smartphones are one reason: most mobile devices only show the first 25 characters, some less. Given that upwards of 50% of all B2B email is first read on a mobile device … well, you get the picture. Every word has to have a purpose and if you can’t keep the length below 25 characters, be sure that the first 25 have lots of power.

If you would like some help crafting subject lines for your next email campaign feel free to contact me (bryan [at] directeffectmedia.com). Not only can my team and I help you find the best, most effective list(s) to power your email effort, we can also gladly throw in our two cents on subject-lines and other campaign components. Your success is ours.

3 Steps to Improve Email Response Rates

The list of do’s and don’ts in direct marketing is long and when asked “what am I doing wrong” it reminds me of all the times on the golf course when my wife asked me what she was doing wrong after each unsuccessful stroke at the ball. My answer: “Where do I begin?”

Much like golf, you can’t fix the whole swing in one round or even two. Sometimes there’s just too much that needs fixing. So you focus on a few things that can be easily implemented for quick results.

Here are 3 steps you can take to improve performance of email campaigns:

1.) Make an offer.

An offer is not “Learn More”, nor is it “Find a reseller near you”. I see these kinds of messages quite often, and when they come from a client of mine I ask why they are wasting their marketing budgets this way. Often the answer is a lack of resources to create a more compelling offer — meaning a white paper, a webinar, a free trial, etc. Yet if you transmit an email that has no call-to-action that will allow you to capture a lead, you are wasting money. (In this context I am speaking to the use of external, rented lists). If you want to get the word out to a targeted audience, but don’t have content that lends itself to capturing a lead for the sales team, try sponsoring an e-newsletter and/or run a banner on sites which reach your audience. Newsletter sponsorships less costly than dedicated email to the same list. Many online publishers also have lead-generation programs where they create content for you and promote it on their sites. You pay per lead. While I’m not a fan of these programs generally, they do offer those without internal resources a way to run lead-gen programs.

2.) The Landing Page

One of the biggest mistakes I see online marketers make is with the landing page: Often it has no relation to the message which brought the prospect there. Blank forms are scary. Let the prospect you’ve enticed there feel welcome by reiterating your selling proposition; let him know why he’s there to complete the form — the benefits of doing so. In other words, the sales process you began in the email is not done just because the recipient of that email clicked through. Keep it going. The example below is what “not” to do. (This form contained a company logo but it was removed for this illustration.)

3.) Test Something

Like a direct mail program, an email prospecting effort has multiple opportunities for testing: lists, message, subject line, offer, distribution day/time, etc.

Testing presents another easy way to continually improve upon your email lead generation efforts.

I’ll go back to my days of writing direct mail to illustrate the importance of the email subject line and address it with the same caveat: like the outer envelope in direct mail, the email subject line is your opening shot, but it does not stand-alone. It has to address the prospect (let the reader know the content addresses his want or need), convey some benefit, and be interesting/compelling/intriguing, but it must not cheat the prospect. What this means is that the subject-line must be “expanded upon” once the recipient opens your message. Don’t create subject lines that steer the prospect in one direction only to have him be cheated once he opens the email and reads the message.

Before the web existed and I used to write direct mail one of the tests that was popular was “teaser copy” vs. “no teaser copy” on the envelope. The other option of course was to test different teaser copy. That’s what you’re doing when you prospect with email: the subject line is teaser copy. And it has a huge impact on performance. Test it.

The day and time that you deploy email campaigns is easy to test. Split your list and experiment. And don’t be locked into certain times or days based upon what you’ve read or heard from others. Be open to getting a little unconventional: try Sunday morning if you think it might be a good time. Send half of the list you’ve secured for the blast at your usual time and half on a “riskier” day and time. Keep in mind, too, that it’s not just clicks you want to measure — and not even leads generated. If possible, look at how many leads make it into the sales forecasted pipeline and, ultimately, revenue generation.

The other areas for testing, such as the message itself and the offer, require a little more effort in terms of resources — mostly human. But if you have the assets, such as more than one white paper or e-book or on-demand webinar, test them. Test your selling proposition in the message. Test everything that makes sense to test.

And especially test lists as these have probably the biggest impact on your email’s performance. I will address this subject in my next post.

Are SmartPhones Killing eMail ROI?

I posted a piece a while back discussing the fact that many business-people (50% or so) catch up on their email in the evening. They’re busy in meetings, etc. during the day and email is a distraction. The conventional wisdom has always been to send out commercial emails so they arrive in recipients’ inboxes during the workday — and often early in the day. For example, 11AM Eastern Time has for years been the preferred send time. I wrote that this conventional wisdom has got to go the way of BETA video recorders.

My belief then as now is that marketers need to test the deployment time just as they test other components such as creative, subject lines, lists, etc. Now I have another explaination for lousy click-through rates: The SmartPhone.

A report I read recently claimed that 52% of mobile phone owners access the same email across muliple devices, with the other 48% using a distinct account for mobile email only. No doubt this study was across the consumer spectrum. It you are a B2B marketer I think you safely assume that the number is closer to 75% of mobile phone owners accessing their email across multiple devices.

Let’s start with some introspection:

- Do you own a Smartphone?
- How many times per day do you check for messages?
- Do you scroll through emails quickly to look for the most pressing?
- What makes you stop what you’re doing and open some email messages and not others?
- Do you delete relevant ones on all devices or just on the Smartphone?
- When you do open a commercial message, how does it look on your device?

We marketers who have relied on email to get in touch with our customers and prospects have to change with the times and understand when and on “which devices” those customers and prospects read and manage their email communiations. And if you’re a B2B marketer I think you can safely assume that a large percentage are NOT reading your emails because they are being deleted on the SmartPhone.

So what’s the solution? I think there are several: shorter from lines; shorter and powerful subject lines, a compelling “top of the fold” are a few. By taking these steps can ensure that your emails render optimally on mobile platforms. And they won’t hurt generally either.

Another solution might be to actually determine which devices recipients are actually viewing your emails on, rather than go with a simple assumption. Unica Corporation, a marketing software solutions provider, has tools which do this. There are others, no doubt. I’m not advocating for any particular product or company. Just a starting point for your research.

The takeaway here is that you have to design and write your emails in such a way that you “adjust” for mobile device readership. You may see those click-through rates improve.

Time to dump conventional wisdom.

Email open rates have plummeted in the last 2 years, and the drop in open rates has led to a drop in response rates (it’s one of the reasons for lower response rates).

In an effort to push these rates back up I have advised clients to test subject lines, content, offers, and even deployment times, but the last one, deployment times, has not been “boldly” tested. I think the time has come to throw out conventional wisdom with respect to this issue. A recent survey by Harris Interactive and Xobni gives us marketers the green light to get bold.

The takeaway from the survey: 43 percent of Americans check their email outside of work hours “to ease their workload and not feel so overwhelmed while in the office.”

That’s significant and if you time your email deployments right you could see an increase in readership and response.

Consider this statistic from the survey of 3,000 people: 72% of Americans check email on weekends, during vacations, and non-work days.

What we have always hoped to do with email campaigns is ensure that a recipient received our email during business hours (not before and not after) so that the email wouldn’t be in the first wave of emails one encounters upon entering the office each morning and opening the inbox. But what if the email arrived in the early evening when one has more time and is less harried than during the day — and can take more time to review what’s in the mail inbox?

It’s something to think about and surely something worth testing.

You can see more of the survey results here.

What’s happened to Email Response Rates?

I’ve been helping my clients acquire lists and execute email campaigns for over 10 years. In the beginning finding lists was the challenge. Today it’s finding lists that work.

The vertical industry trade pub email lists, which are still priced up to $400CPM, used to work when email open rates were thirty percent and up and click through rates were commonly at 5% against delivery amount. But today you’re lucky to get a 10% open rate and a 1% click through rate. It’s tough to generate quality, convertable leads with those numbers.

So what to do?

One thing I’ve pressed upon my clients is to try and do without the granularity (demographic selects) on lists and mail to larger quantities in exchange for a lower CPM. Most of the lists derived from controlled circulation pubs have limited demographic data anyway because many “subscribers” don’t answer all of the questions, such as title, function, purchase influences, etc. By limiting your list pull to only those subs who match your select criteria you are missing potentially good prospects — and ones who may not be receiving a lot of email due to the lack of demographic information provided. So why not try and scoop them up, get a lower cost, and even with dismal open and click-through rates, still have a chance at a decent ROI?

That’s one way to increase ROI. There are others. I’ll be proffering those ideas in a later post.

Here’s to successful marketing.