The Email Wars

So this week I has Dela Quist’s Study from AlchemyWorx on my brain. I was watching the flood of emails from retailers I have been getting and wondering based on Subject line length ONLY which ones were converting. Tell you the truth, it was all a crap shoot to me. I need to see the data and just making guesses only gets you in trouble. 

What to do? Well I emailed it to Dela and called on him to apply his learnings and knowledge of Subject Lines and conversions and tell me his quick impressions. Here is what I got (and yes he told me I could share it). 

Q: How Does this Subject Line work?

A: It is always difficult to answer a question like that without a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve opens? clicks? sales online? or sales in store? Or as I can probably guess all of the above which is why I don’t think it is a very good subject line.

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Study Finds Some Top Brand Marketers Are Struggling To Provide Adequate Email Unsubscribe Options

Twenty Percent of Marketers Sent Additional Email Messages To Consumers After Confirming The Person Had Unsubscribed

Twenty percent of top brand marketers sent additional emails to subscribers after confirming an unsubscribe request, Return Path discovered with its new research study titled Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After “Unsubscribe Me.” Eleven percent of the companies studied emailed subscribers more than 10 days after confirming an unsubscribe request - a violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Marketers risk impacting their overall email reputation with spam complaints if they have a faulty email unsubscribe process.

Return Path, the leading e-mail deliverability and reputation management company, conducted the study by unsubscribing from the email lists of 45 companies from the retail, consumer goods, travel, and media/entertainment industries. Return Path originally subscribed to these email lists to conduct its Subscriber Experiences study.

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It was interesting to read this from the UK. Really you don’t like video in email? It does not make you click? I would totally be up for testing that one. Instead of asking maybe we should run a test against UK subscribers. I know that video (I use video loosely as in fake video player jumping to the landing page) works a lot in email tactics and people “loves thems somes” videos!

Anyone up for the challenge? Tink from Dot Mailer? Dela from Alchemy Worx? Want to see if we can disprove this? 

The Study:

Social email marketing loses favor with 22% of consumers

Consumers are less likely to respond to social email marketing linked to video, microsites and social networking sites, a new survey shows.

According to the 2008 Email Attitudes Survey from e-Dialogue, 22 per cent of consumers said they are unlikely to respond to social marketing, while just 12 per cent said they would click on messages on sites such as YouTube and Facebook.

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Might be old news, but news none the less. Let’s get on our game guys and get DKIM compliant with ALL ESPs and clients using our ESPs. Not an option. Time to force compliance.

Either mandate DKIM, SenderID and SPF or get out of email marketing services and use. These things are not hard folks and we all need to push our brands and clients into compliance. Are you cool with this AL? Just wanted to check that I pass your litmus test.

Read the AOL News 

Whenever another study comes out everyone has a different take on it. Media loves to create a story don’t they. And in times where we are seeing sales struggle in the asiles and ecom stores we don’t need to erode marketing confidence anymore. 

Open Rates are down! Email is slowing! RSS and 2.0 will kill your programs. Sunday nights are the best night to send emails with colored links! College Students only read SMS in class with subject lines that are less than 4 characters!

Folks, I love the studies and data, but take everything you see with a grain of salt and spend more time looking at your own email marketing programs. This is the time to focus on the 3 Things You Should Be Good At and not what is happening to everyone else. Typically this is the time we are focusing on the end game of the year and marching to the finish line. Stay the course and dive deeper into your results and programs. Not those of your neighbor. FTW (For the WIN)!

Head down. Eye on the Ball. Be the Ball.

Read the eMarketer Article, then return to your focus.

I have seen this email “trick” used over the years as a great ploy to make you think that you are part of a secret insiders only group and that this discount is one that only you are privy to. Not this being said it is a good trick that works. 

If you were to just tell me 30% off it would feel like another ploy to tap my wallet. But when you put it out like this we seem to feel that it is something that we MUST take advantage of. To the typical consumer an insider discount that ONLY the employee gets is a great campaign in the making. 

I love that not only did they make it online but also bar coded it so that you could take it in, use it, pass it to others, print it out and make copies for friends, etc. Well executed and well done. And guess what, you don’t need to get that holiday night and weekend job to get the “employee” discount. Now when it fails is when you do it more than once. If this becomes a once a year deal or even twice a year fine, but you cannot run this promo more than once in the same season. It loses it’s implied value. Sure it might drive some more sales, but you are just making it another couponing event that makes us numb. 

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So often we talk about making sure that we design for the preview pane. Make your actions clear, your creative work, your buttons pop, etc. But what happens when you do it and it works out right, and you don’t follow the above ideas? Well it works out a genius in this case. 

What I loved about this email was that it gave just enough to make me want to open it and see more. I have attached the preview in my email client to first show you what I saw. They below you will see what I saw after I opened it all the way. What makes this so powerful in the preview pane was the FREE part. I had no clue what I was in for for free, but it made me want to know more. WIN. 

The idea behind designing for the preview pane is to make people want to know and read more. Even if it falls out of line with the idea of giving them the actions first, it gives you a little mystery that makes it work for me. And I assume others as well. 

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