White is the New Black - Friday

Or..how to be different on Black Fridays

Obama and Subject Line Testing

Testing up to 18 copy / subject line variants at a time, the Obama team discovered that the subject line 'Hey' was the one that drove the most donations. It literally brought in millions of dollars!





Original article can be found here

12.12.12

Favourite Subject Line of the Day

Nice email copy too..

Easy Subject Line Testing

Looking to see how to test your email subject lines?

It can be as simple as this example from ASOS that mistakenly appeared in my Inbox

But here are a few other ideas / tips

Test according to segment to understand how different audiences react to different copy

Length. I've usually found that shorter, to the point is better. Your audience may be different

Do versus Say. Does your audience react better to actionable or informative headlines?

Search and Copy. What's your audience searching for using Google or perhaps on your own website ?

Be careful what you wish for

But please don't act your agency the question I had put to me last year.

'Why does the subject line including the free offer get more opens than one without  but then the clicks remain the same?'

Getting your audience to open the email is not the end game. Your end game is always the ultimate conversion whether that be a sale, whitepaper download or an event booking

Favourite Subject Line of The Week

Just because...

Symbols in Email Subject Lines - 2

Now I know I hate these things - see Symbols in Email Subject Lines, but this one in my Junk Folder did make me smile

Favourite Subject Line of the Week

I'm assuming that because I haven't bought any 'Y-fronts' from figleaves for a while, they've assumed I've had a sex change

Favourite Subject Line of the Week

To be honest I'd actually forgotten that I had a review on there, so I was intrigued by how many people had seen my review.

So of course it came as a surprise when I saw that over 40 people had read my review of this pub out n the middle of nowhere.

Funnily enough this email then came up in conversation with my wife on our way back from eating some pretty average food at Hotel du Vin.

Even she admitted that these days news of the poor food was sure to be spread quickly with Social Media - and this from someone who believes Facebook, Twitter etc are tools of Satan.

Favourite Subject Line of The Week

What else?!

(Least) Favourite Subject Line of the Week

Even if I was, which I'm not, please use my name or nothing at all

Favourite Subject Line(s) of the Week

Whoops!

Favourite Subject Line of the Week

Please, which one of my hairs am I supposed to mould?

Favourite Subject Line of the Week

If only because it had the word 'conversation in it'. But actually because it introduced to the Native American Pet Teepee and a few other 'interesting' conversation starters

.....but further down the Canadians don't get left out




























































































































































































...Told you !!

Symbols in Subject Lines - Deliverability and Impact

Setting aside my personal view (Symbols in Email Subject Lines) that we should focus on the relevancy of message , rather than putting lipstick on a pig, I cam across 2 interesting views on symbols from Return Path and Alchemy Worx

A couple of key take outs -

''I have heard some marketers question whether adding symbols to subject lines will affect deliverability.  In the research I’ve done so far, I have not seen that to be the case, and all of the examples showcased above were delivered to the inbox versus the junk folder'' 


''It’s also important to note that these Unicode symbols will not work in every email client.  In addition, some of the symbols won’t render well on the small screen and will end up looking smushed and unrecognizable''
- Return Path

Image from Alchemy Worx

''Even if testing shows this to be effective at the moment, this advantage is likely to disappear over time as the trick becomes more prevalent.'


''Let’s not just do it for the sake of it, or because we want to cash in on the trend then move on''
- Alchemy Worx





Read more at Return Path and Alchemy Worx

Favourite Email Subject Line of the Week

Well not so much the subject line...

As the actual Novelty Drive...

It's July so I'm assuming these were left over from last Christmas!!

Least Favourite Subject Line of the Week, Month,Year

Whoever is pressing the button at Kitbag tonight worked late to get the timing right for this

This was updated on the BBC website at

And this appeared in my inbox about 6 minutes later

Being an Italy fan, it was moved to the Trash folder about 30 seconds  later..only to be salvaged for this small post

5 Email Subject Lines You'll Never Read But You Actually Get Every Day

If every email you sent cost the same as a piece of direct mail, you'd think twice before sending your next campaign out...wouldn't you?

1. 50% Off Items  in Colours You Won't Like And Are Not Available In Your Size
2. A Further 20% Off the Stuff You Didn't Want to Buy at Even 50% off
3. You've Never Opened an Email From Us Before But It Doesn't Cost Us Much to Send You Another
4. Some Great Offers Based on What Someone Else Bought
5. Don't Bother Reading This On Your Mobile
   
   

Other Contributions Welcome........

Favourite Subject Line of the Week

Non Opens from an email campaign can be a useful segmentation and trigger

I received this email today, Saturday 

Actually I had all of them, so this was a nice and timely reminder. The Wine Club had obviously looked a their non opener file for the sequence of 5 emails and and used that to trigger a reminder message to me


Not only that, but they summarised the deals within the email, negating the need for me to trawl though my inbox .

Symbols in Email Subject Lines

Let me say this once. Please don't

You know what I'm talking about right?
Some brands have decided that they need stand out in the inbox so are experimenting with adding symbols such as the one below in their subject lines

To me this is the equivalent to the unlucky sod who has to stand outside a restaurant handing out flyers trying to get you to go into eat food you have no interest in, or this retailers that feel the need to have a recorded voice blaring out onto the high street telling you that they are selling the cheapest used iPhones on the high street!

Shall I tell you how to get stand out in my inbox? Get a reputation for sending me content I am looking for. Don't worry about stand out with gimmicks, I'll come find you.

You might get short term success with the symbols but eventually every man and his dog will be doing it and my inbox will look a real mess!

Look at the Unicode chart below to see the options

Valentines everyone will add a heart
Winter Holidays will have the Skier
Summer Holidays will have the Sun
Delivery Info will have the Lorry

Painful!!

I have already vowed to unsubscribe from anyone that does it! Sorry SuperDry

Favourite Subject Line of the Week

If only because it led to this

Now a few things spring to mind.

I cant quite figure out if this is great segmentation or not. Yes, I haven't shopped with Figleaves for a while now so, so as a reactivation piece it makes sense. But I've only ever bought male products from Figleaves so either they are teasing me a male with a shot of a woman in lingerie or they have ignored me as a male. ( In all fairness I'd rather see a woman in lingerie than a man in a pair of pants )

So I checked my last few emails, and yes they all had lingerie clad women - I wont put them all on here you'll have to take my word for it.

Maybe my personal details were wrong? So I checked them

No, it seems they don't bother segmenting male versus female.

A client of mine once suggested to me the reason they didn't segment male versus female in their fashion newsletters was that they didn't have enough male customers on the base. So I politely asked how many they had. A top of the head figure of 10% was mentioned, with a promise to go check.
After a little checking, a figure of 25% came up. Now considering that as part of their product offering, there was a specific male range it now became obvious that they should be doing something even if mean that part of the email had some male content. enough said, they took the advice and sales of the men's range increased

I was intrigued by the copy at the top right of the email suggesting that I've left something in my basket. 

Especially as it got me to click though to this.

Why would you do that? Again, you 2 possibilities. Either you are trying to trick me into going to the website or you are using some email template from another part of the email programme. Whichever it is, don't do it! It's confusing, wastes my time and actually reduces the chances of me clicking though in the future