Why it pays to review your subject line length and purpose

What we think influences what we say, and what we say influences what we think. Now what has that got to do with subject lines? Well, it starts with our certainty that we pretty much know what works and what doesn't. You see similar advice in many places: don't use all capitals, keep it short...that sort of thing.

It's dangerous to rely on intuition and experience all the time

Repeating subject line mantras doesn't always make them right. The fact is, our intuition and experience are not always accurate guides to what works best. And if you think otherwise, Which Test Won will quickly dispel any illusions. Consider, for example, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company... when it tested a normal subject line against the all-capitals version, the latter got more opens - not what you'd expect at all. All caps works for Overstock, too. And keep…

Last October I wrote about how to put hearts, smilies and other symbols into the the subject line to make it standout in the inbox. Whilst there was debate in the comments on that post about whether it made the email look like spam or not, its certainly a technique that many marketers have been using this Valentines. Maybe too many? My thanks go to Andrew Kordek of Trendline Interactive and Cathy Conk from Netflix for letting me show the examples below. Note how the iPhone in particular shows a coloured heart with 3D effect.

Mobile email version

Desktop email version

Everyone is going ♥ crazy...

What do you think? If you have run split tests using…

Dear Email, I fell in love with you at first sight! You opened and whole new world for me. You’re smart, well read and fun to be around. Falling in love with you was easy for me. Solid (as a rock) ♫ For years our relationship has been solid and you’ve always been there with new ideas and perspectives which have added more value to my life. You’ve helped me plan some of the most important times of my life. Some Kinda Wonderful ♫ We’ve done some pretty cool things together! Remember that Christmas you helped me shop and got everyone the perfect gift? Or how about that amazing vacation we planned together? You’ve never let me forget a birthday or anniversary and…

Do magic words exist or are they a copywriting myth?

I recently received a copywriting advice email  from Yale University describing the ‘the most powerful words in the English Language’. Here they are: 1. You 2. Results 3. Health 4. Guarantee 5. Discover 6. Love 7. Proven 8. Safety 9. Save 10. New Although I agree that these are powerful words, I doubt Yale really conducted any rigorous research – and if they did, it’s certainly not something that the University chooses to share on its official website. What is interesting is how long these types of list have been "doing the rounds". It taps into the insatiable demand for instant solutions. Human nature finds the notion very appealing that all you need do is sprinkle a few magic words into your writing like fairy dust and, Hey Presto, an instant increase in sales pops out of the hat. Using magic words in the right place in your copy and in the right order…

Email campaigns we like to learn from

I recently reviewed how ASOS does a great job of engaging their audience both through email and social media marketing.  Here, I'm going to review one example of an email campaign I like, calling out what I think works well and not so well. In the second part of 2011, ASOS seemed to make quite a few creative refinements to its email designs and this winter style campaign is a good example of the new approach.

Getting the creative balance right

Effective email design for a brand like ASOS needs to get the balance right between the visual appeal the brand offers with clear calls-to-action and offer. I think this creative gets this balance right: Let's now go into some of the details:

The pre-header

Pre-headers are widely used in the US, but are not adopted so widely in the UK. This one is fairly…

Key features and three ideas for effective winback subject lines

Last week I was presenting at the DMA Email Customer Lifecycle Win-back breakfast seminar and I also enjoyed the related discussion on Smart Insights around Dela Quist's post on how to treat inactive email subscribers. I wrote up the seminar on the Email Vision blog, but here I thought it may interesting for Smart Insights readers to see a summary, since it relates to the inactives issue we were discussing.

What makes for an effective winback subject line?

In a moment, I'll share examples from the seminar, but first it's worth thinking through the key features to make these subject lines. The rules are different for inactives. Incentive and benefit based subject lines maybe just right for active customers. However the tone and voice must reflect the current state of relationship to the person you are communicating. So for disengaged customers, a…

Design and campaign ideas for the holiday season

Any self-respecting article on holiday email marketing needs an obligatory comment about the number of shopping days left. Or some reference to sleighs and deliverability. Done. It's tough thinking of new things to say about Christmas email campaigns. It's also tough coming up with ideas to help your Christmas emails stand out from everyone else's. Sprinkling a few stars and stockings around your weekly promotion may not be enough. Fortunately, help is at hand...here, for example, are six sets of sources to provide design and campaign inspiration for the coming weeks.

Christmas email design galleries, subject line help, campaign inspiration

1. CampaignMonitor runs an annual Christmas email design competition. See the winning designs for 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005. 2. Beautiful Email Newsletters feature ten Christmas campaign designs, while the Email Institute's Email Gallery has another 26. Also check the…

For more than 35 years, journalists have been kicking around numbers of “impressions/advertisements” a person is exposed to in one day … “1,500,” “2,000,” and “up to 3,000.” Ad “impression” level indicates each individual receiving approximately 3000 advertising “impressions” daily. This was certainly a compendium of all marketing/advertising channels – TV commercials, billboards, ad-serving, banner ads, newspaper and magazine ads, email – personal and marketing - to name a few. Picture this: The infamous Times Square “Naked Cowboy” is an impression in this sea. He sells something. One moment here for you here means hundreds of impressions. Overload! Cereal Island in the grocery store! This study was prior to major online adoption by most channels; no big social forces were in play (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, cable top box bursts, pre/post roll ads on videos, etc.). So what is that daily impression volume now? It is vast; it is staggering. Too staggering to…

Use content and data to connect with customers With companies like Silverpop, Genius and Office Autopilot, it's become much easier to develop a serious semi-automated approach to email marketing - and one that can dove-tail with a much wider content marketing or social strategy without draining all of your time. We noticed that Silverpop pulled together this presentation, embedded below, this is also worth look.

Here's the Silverpop take-aways…

It's easier than ever to leverage data, and there's more than you might first think: Inferred Customer Data - learn by listening Implicit - monitoring blogs, social networks and customer communities Explicit - or Behavioural Data - learn by measuring You know the old adage: Sell the sizzle, not the steak. There's a new rule: Educate with grilling tips, recipes and wine pairing Appreciate the link between social and email, the sharing and re-purposing of content. Arguably those that interact and open your email are the most likely…

Using symbols to engage your email subscribers

Getting the email subject line to standout in the inbox is a continual challenge. Here I'll show you how you can experiment with a technique you don't see discussed much in email marketing. It's about the potential of symbols, such as snowmen and hearts, to achieve this. I say "potential" deliberately - do you think it's a useful technique - would you use it and when? Email clients have been improving their support for world languages and this has meant also support for the many symbols that are defined in the world character set, known as Unicode. I decided to try a few symbols and see just how well email clients did in correctly showing them. The subject line I tested with was this: The webmail clients for Gmail,…