Visual Sciences answers your online marketing questions with easy-to-use products and one of the most experienced Best Practices teams in the industry. The "Analyzing your Paid Search Spending" tip sheet you requested is available to download here.
A Visual Sciences representative will contact you shortly to discuss measuring the effectiveness of your paid search campaigns.
Tip #1: The more that your potential customers see your name in front of them, the more likely they are to call your number and not your competitors.
Many marketing efforts go unrewarded, not because they were off target but simply because they weren't given enough of an opportunity to work. Showing your TV commercial one time, running an ad in the newspaper once, or sending only one mailing piece won't be enough to grab and keep the audience's attention.
Taking the time to really see which messages generate the response you want will really pay off. Don't just totally give up when a response is low - persistence is vital.
Get your name out there. Do it on a regular basis and people will remember you when they need someone in your line of business. Actually, this particular piece of advice cannot be stressed enough - and failure to adhere to it is the number one reason new businesses fail in their first year.
Tip # 2: Measure your return on investment (ROI) in terms of actual money, not response rate.
An advertising vehicle is working when the money that it brings in has more value than the money and time that is spent on the marketing.
Don't fall into the trap of becoming discouraged by a small number of callers responding to a large number of pieces. If you spend several hundred dollars to be in the view of a few thousand possible leads, it may only take a few customers responding for you to make enough of a profit for this type of marketing to be valuable. The usefulness of any vehicle can only be determined after the amount of income generated by the promotion has been calculated. If you spend one-fifth of what you generate or generate five times what you spend, your campaign was successful.
Tip #3: It is much easier to sell to a prospect once you get them to call or come in to your store.
In two step marketing, step one is to get them interested; step two is having them speak to a representative to get all the details - and get "closed" by that representative.
Your design must be eye catching and informative, but don't try to close the sale by explaining all of the details in one piece of advertising. The details of a business transaction may often take many more words to explain than the main concept of what is being sold. For example, if your company offers great prices depending on the quantity purchased, there is no need to list the prices for every quantity that you sell. Simply give examples of two or three different quantities and state somewhere in the advertisement that other discounts are available for other quantities. This will prompt them to call to get the rest of the details once you have gotten their interest.
Release Date: 29 November 2007
ComScore Media Metrix is predicting Cyber Monday sales of $700 million, far surpassing the $608 million from last year’s Monday following Thanksgiving.
More than 50 percent (54.5) of office workers with internet access - that’s 68.5 million people - will shop at work today, up from 50.7 percent in 2006, despite the increased prevalence of high-speed broadband connections at home, according to a BigResearch survey commissioned by Shop.org (via MediaPost).
Chad White, founder of the RetailEmail blog and director of retail insights for the Email Experience Council, an arm of the Direct Marketing Association, also believes that sales today will be significantly higher than last year. He points to retailers’ email marketing activities as an indication that retailers have been making a hard push to drive sales for Cyber Monday.
However, forecasts have predicted a certain amount of gloom for the holiday season, thanks to declining economic conditions. Marketing pushes began earlier in the season to try to boost holiday sales, and some believe shopping enthusiasm today will be dampened.
Cyber Monday is no longer considered the busiest online shopping day of the season. That day generally falls on a Monday two weeks before Christmas, and is this year predicted to land on Dec. 10.
November 26, 2007
CobWebs: 10 criteria for online fundraising
By Herschell Gordon Lewis
Excepting political, of course, a great many veteran fundraisers question the effectiveness of email and a monolithic Web site in competing for the fundraising dollar, pound, euro, yen, and pledge.
Shakespeare anticipated this reaction when he wrote, "The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Some of the accepted procedures for commercial online marketing fall flat when applied to eleemosynary online marketing (no, the terms "eleemosynary" and "marketing" aren't mutually-canceling).
The fundraiser who sequentially at10ds to 10 relatively simple criteria should find this newest -- and admittedly the most challenging -- medium responsive. If you've become disgusted with email as a lead generator or a resuscitator or even as a reminder, a suggestion: retest, with wording congruent to the Web mindset.
An online appeal has the benefit and the curse of fast acceptance/rejection. That's Step One. Holding at10tion and immediately converting at10tion to the first of these suggested criteria is an indication of fundraising professionalism.
Criterion no. 1: Rapport
Of all 10, this one is most crucial. Assumption of a relationship, real or invented, is the essential key to positive attention. That means starting the message with rapport-laden wording, whether in the subject line or the first sentence of text. It also means discarding trickiness, cleverness, and chest-thumping.
Criterion no. 2: Rationale
Saying to the message recipient, "I'm contacting you because you are who you are" adds octane, provided the first criterion has been established. The two are Siamese twins, tightly joined at the brain. Pretending you're getting the message instead of sending it is no great challenge. Ask: Why am I contacting this person? Is it because he or she gave us money before? Is it because the last contribution was long ago or because the demographic matches our best donors? Distilling the answers should result in a rationale.
Criterion no. 3: Heroism
We all deal with the truism that every nonprofit is competitive with every other nonprofit. The typical donor has a finite amount of money to contribute to all causes. So the library competes with the symphony orchestra, which competes with the hospital, which competes with the community foundation. Being able to tell a prospective or lapsed donor, "You can be a hero" -- in credible, digestible wording -- can jog that individual off the stump of apathy.
Criterion no. 4: Logic
"We need help" is half a century out of date. Everybody needs help, which automatically diminishes this ancient approach. Instead, the first three criteria should isolate our cause on a plateau above the phone calls from shadowy law enforcement sources and direct mail that claims worthiness without the rhetorical weaponry of rapport, rationale, or heroism. Projecting the concept of logic isn't wording that says to the recipient, "This matches you"; rather, it's wording that has the recipient saying to himself or herself, "This matches me."
Criterion no. 5: Urgency
Urgency is implicit, and it also should be explicit. What makes the timing tight? Why are we in a hurry, which means you should be in a hurry to participate? What emergency exists? Careful, now: Our rapport-buddy has to accept what we regard as urgent on identical grounds. Don't sink too deeply into the overly dramatic. Panic not only isn't a sales weapon, it's a turnoff, and the rapport-switch can too quickly snap to "off." Urgency, too, becomes controversial because it's at odds with a venerable fundraising method. Note the next criterion.
Criterion no. 6: No pledges
Pledges and immediacy are at the antipodes of online appeals. You're using the "Right now" medium, and your call should stay in sync with the medium. No one can object to testing the pledge-option, but that's what it should be -- a test rather than a given. Inherent mutual speed is a characteristic that doesn't extend from the Web to standard-class direct mail. It does have a cousin -- public service space ads and broadcast commercials ... but they aren't the topic under dissection.
Criterion no. 7: Recognition
Any and every professional fundraiser knows how to stroke a donor. That's nothing new. Inclusion of publicized recognition, often decked with ribbons on a separate enclosure in a direct mail appeal, should be mentioned early on and exploited later on. The nature of online fundraising makes us wary of unexplained defections. Where did we lose that person? Immediately, because we just didn't connect? Was it halfway through the pitch? At the end, was it because we didn't convince? The early mention of recognition is a glue. It might be a weak glue, but certainly that's better than no glue.
Criterion no. 8: Guilt
Guilt is one of the great motivators of our time, and properly mounted it outweighs any of the others in fundraising. The acknowledged others are: fear, greed, exclusivity, need for approval. There are also two "soft" motivators, convenience and pleasure. In commercial online marketing, greed is the runaway winner. Being able to generate a guilt-reaction might well be the height of fundraising art. It becomes "If we fail, you fail," blended with a non-threa10ing but clear "It's up to you."
Criterion no. 9: Satisfaction
Satisfaction links itself to guilt, rewarded. Don't assume the person to whom you're communicating will complete this link without you. Hammer it home: "You'll sleep the sleep of the just tonight" is the effect. Is that specific wording too strong, too obvious, too forceful? That becomes an executive creative decision. Although all fundraising is competitive with all other fundraising, uniqueness is a mandatory component, and whether you enter the arena with guns blazing or roses tendered is a matter of intended projected image.
Criterion no. 10: Verisimilitude
Of all the criteria, verisimilitude -- the appearance of truth and validity -- is the most difficult to impose because without exquisite tuning, explanation inadvertently (or deliberately) gives way to what the reader too easily can interpret as supplication. That's all it takes to wipe out both rapport and guilt.
An absolute rule for online fundraising is that we don't have to justify our existence to those we're contacting. The salesperson who says, "I'll be honest with you," is immediately suspect.
It boils down to this: We've heard it throughout our professional careers: Direct mail doesn't work. Space ads don't work. Broadcast doesn't work. Handouts don't work. And now, online doesn't work.
Opinion: Each one works for some others. So it isn't the medium that doesn't work. It's the use or misuse of the medium that doesn't work. The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Online political group Truthout.org cried foul recently after Hotmail and AOL blocked its e-mail. At the same time, Yahoo! apparently has been shunting Truthout's messages into subscribers' junk folders.
But rather than conducting an internal assessment of its e-mail program to find out why it's having delivery troubles at the three largest e-mail inbox providers, the organization's executive director Marc Ash called on subscribers to pressure the ISPs into delivering their mail.
“NOTHING works better than public pressure,” he said in a post on Truthout. “They can ignore us; they can't ignore you.”
There's a lesson here for marketers: Ash's approach couldn't be more wrong-headed.
Large ISPs don't block e-mail arbitrarily, and certainly not because of the messages' political content.
“In all my years at AOL, I can tell you that AOL never intentionally blocked an organization for their political views. I would not have allowed it,” wrote Carl Hutzler, the former head of AOL's anti-spam team, in a blog post commenting on the matter.
AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo! use spam-complaint rates — the number of people who press the “report spam” button — as the No. 1 gauge to determine whether to block incoming messages. By all accounts, a complaint rate of more than 0.5% will cause delivery problems.
E-mailers who send to too many bad addresses can also find their messages blocked. Sending to dead addresses is classic spamming behavior.
That two large ISPs are blocking Truthout's messages independently of one another is a sure indicator that Truthout's spam complaints are too high, that it's mailing too many bad addresses, or some combination of the two.
“These ISPs are competitors. They're not sharing this kind of data back and forth,” says Al Iverson, director, privacy and deliverability for e-mail service provider ExactTarget. “It's a technical issue. In the case of AOL and Hotmail, there's a big sign on the door that says if you want to come in here, you have to do ‘X,’ ‘Y’ and ‘Z.’ ”
According to Iverson, Truthout could easily clean up its act by doing the following:
Sign up for feedback loops — programs that provide spam-complaint reports — at AOL and Hotmail.
Make sure it unsubscribes people who complain.
Ensure that bounced addresses get unsubscribed automatically.
Apply for whitelist status at AOL.
Or, he said, Truthout could move to a service provider where these processes are handled automatically.
Ash didn't respond to an e-mail asking if he'd taken steps to clean up his group's e-mail practices.
Magilla Marketing, Ken Magill's weekly e-mail newsletter, is archived at http://directmag.com/magill/.
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on November 13, 2007
One of the long unanswered questions about email marketing is whether you can combine video and email in a way that works.
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on November 15, 2007
More tears were shed in 2007 over rendering problems than perhaps any other email marketing issue. Outlook 2007 broke some designer hearts and much ink has gone into suggesting ways to ensure your design works well wherever people look at it.
Over the years we've received loads of inquiries about the use of forms in emails, such as newsletter subscribe forms, event registration and surveys. So we decided to run some tests to get to the bottom of just how well forms are supported in all the major email environments.
Is it okay to use forms in emails? It’s not the best idea. But what do you say when your client asks you to put one in an email? You can either tell them “no” for reasons which may not make sense to them, or you can back up your defiance with some hard evidence.
The short of it is that email clients consider email forms to be a security risk. While some email clients simply warn you of potential danger, others outright disable the forms. So if your client wants to send out a form, they should know that most of their recipients will never be able to use it. And for those who can, they’ll think twice about submitting data when they see a warning from their email client.
Common email clients share a propensity to distrust forms in email messages. But they differed greatly in how they handled the intruding forms. Following are some notable oddities.
Upon submitting a form in many webmail clients, a JavaScript alert announces that the form is submitting data to an external page and asks if you want to continue:
![[Gmail screenshot: You are submitting information to an external page. Are you sure?]](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/images/forms/WarningGmail.jpg)
![[Yahoo! Mail screenshot: Warning! You are about to send information to someone other than Yahoo! If you do not want anyone outside of Yahoo! to have this information, click Cancel now. Remember Yahoo! will NEVER ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or an unsolicited email. Please change your preferences if you do not want to see this message again.]](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/images/forms/WarningYahoo.jpg)
Thunderbird recognizes that the form may be malicious but doesn’t strip its functionality. Instead, it warns you of potential danger:
![[Thunderbird screenshot: Thunderbird thinks this message might be an email scam.]](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/images/forms/Thunderbird.jpg)
Windows Live Hotmail shows the form. However, the form functions in an odd way; and certainly not correctly. If the form is submitted by keying the “return” key, the page is refreshed but no data is sent and the process is not completed. If the form is submitted by clicking the submit button, nothing happens. Outlook 2007 also exhibits some unique behavior in that it custom renders the form. Inputs are replaced with brackets and the submit button is replaced with the button’s value enveloped in brackets. So it's a plain-text version of what the form would look like, even though the HTML is being displayed.
| How Forms Perform in HTML Emails | ||
|---|---|---|
| Client | Form is displayed | Form is functional |
| .Mac |  |  |
| Yahoo! Mail | | |
| Yahoo! Mail Classic | | |
| AOL Webmail | | |
| Gmail | | |
| Windows Live Hotmail | | |
| Apple Mail | | |
| Thunderbird | | |
| Penelope (Eudora 8) | | |
| Outlook 2007 | | |
| Outlook 2003 | | |
| Outlook Express | | |
| Windows Live Mail | | |
| Lotus Notes 8 | | |
| Entourage | | |
Given the sporadic support for forms in emails, we recommend linking to a form on a website in an email rather than embedding it therein. This is the safest, most reliable solution to pairing an email message with a form. More people will see it and be able to use it, and as a result participation will increase.
wrote on November 8, 2007 2:26 AM
Hmm, have to differ with at least one of your results here I'm afraid, as we have received and submitted forms using Outlook 2003 SP2, and it appeared to function fine.
That aside, I completely agree on leaving forms out of email. If an email is generating enough interest that someone fills in a form, then it is enough for them to click a link to a webpage before they fill it out.
wrote on November 8, 2007 6:26 AM
Thanks for sharing, Stormy. It's interesting that we experienced different results because we, too, tested Outlook 2003 on XP with SP2. Maybe the types of forms we used differ?
We probably should have pointed out that we tested the POST which performed very poorly, and then proceeded with a GET form which worked much better. Our chart exhibits results from the latter. Also, our form comprised a single text input with a button. Very simple to see if the most basic form would function.
All said, even if some forms function in Outlook 2003 they continue to be unreliable in many other clients. But know that your feedback is still valuable and we appreciate it very much.
wrote on November 9, 2007 3:26 PM
I'm curious, by form does it also mean the polls some people include in their newsletters?
I've always been wondering how they achieved this. :S
wrote on November 9, 2007 6:06 PM
Danny, yes, this refers to any kind of form element in emails, including polls and surveys. Basically, they are very hit and miss and not recommended.
wrote on November 10, 2007 2:22 AM
Something that we've noticed is that forms work in Outlook (pre 2007), but not in the preview pane (they won't post to the server).
wrote on November 17, 2007 12:19 PM
The presumption that participation will increase by using a landing page is open to debate. Users are lazy -- make them click, and that's another commitment. If it's possible to present simple survey queries in an e-mail, you'd likely see more responses. After all, they've already opened the e-mail -- all they have to do is tick a few boxes, or fill out some info, and click. But if they have to take another step, they might be more likely to abandon.
wrote on November 19, 2007 6:12 PM
You are right Sully - it is an extra click, and you would expect to lose some people because of that. Unfortunately though, forms just don't reliably work in email, and it is worse for someone to fill out a form and then see it fail.
The raw number of participants may fall by having a landing page, but the number of successful forms lodged would be expected to increase.
As the holidays approach, chances are you will be launching several email marketing campaigns. Busy holiday marketing schedules heavily rely on email to connect with customers, promote holiday sales and offers, and to drive revenue. With the flurry of emails you’ll be sending out, analyzing your campaigns is critical to improving their effectiveness. Utilizing a robust web analytics package is a great way to scientifically determine what works best for your specific customer segments, and maybe more importantly, what doesn’t work. So, I decided to write a post that covers analyzing your email marketing campaigns by properly tagging your email links (for analysis in Google Analytics). Then you can break down and analyze your email creative at a granular level in your analytics reporting.
Labels: conversion, e-commerce, email-marketing, Google-Analytics, holiday-shopping, marketing-channels, scientific-marketing, web-analytics
Email marketers should therefore make the process of
unsubscribing from emails as easy and trustworthy as possible, as if
ISPs get too many complaints around your emails, this could seriously
damage your sender reputation.
Whether
http://www.clickz.com/3626927
There's been a great deal of discussion lately about why, after 10
years, e-mail marketing is still struggling with the basics of
deliverability and consent. The general consensus among industry
heavyweights is many organizations fail to follow e-mail marketing best
practices. Broadly speaking, blame for bad behavior is placed on three
groups: the new and inexperienced; offline marketers who try to apply
their principles to e-mail; and those knowingly playing fast and loose
to make a quick buck.
Much of the trouble we see today is of our
own making. We messed up, big time. The root cause can be traced to two
phrases: "prior business relationship" and "one bite at the cherry."
Back in 2003, when the federal government sought to enact anti-spam legislation, a variety of industry groups, most notably the Direct Marketing Association
(DMA) pushed for, or acquiesced to those who pushed for, weak
legislation that didn't actually outlaw spam. The DMA's mantra at the
time was "one bite at the cherry,"
arguing that any marketer should be permitted to send one e-mail to
anyone they wished. They and other groups pushed for companies being
permitted to send e-mail to anyone with whom they had a prior business
relationship.
The end result was the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003,
nicknamed by some anti-spam activists as the "You CAN-SPAM Act" because
it legitimized spam and overrode more restrictive laws in a number of
states. If I had a penny for every time a marketer used the excuse "but
the lawyers say it's OK" to try to send spam, my trousers would drop.
Problem is, the law doesn't clearly and unambiguously require companies
to obtain verifiable consent before sending e-mail to individuals.
The
CAN-SPAM Act isn't all bad. It outlawed some deceptive practices not
previously barred. Being a federal law, it was, of course, a
substantial compromise. More important, it's failed its basic
objective: to control the assault of non-solicited pornography and
marketing, even among supposedly legitimate businesses. And that's our
fault!
Why rehash ancient history? There isn't a serious possibility of a new anti-spam law anytime soon.
We
must learn from the past. If we don't recognize what a catastrophic
error was made and how incredibly shortsighted it was to push for such
a weak law, we'll continue to repeat the same mistakes.
The
general consensus is many organizations fail to adhere to best
practices. This failure contributes to significant issues with public
perception of e-mail marketing and delivery of messages. Given this,
one would hope industry groups would have clear statements on the
topic. One would hope they would clearly state that consent is a
requirement. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case.
The Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC) guide
(PDF download) begins by stating its pledge to require affirmative
consent but then immediately discusses best practices for opt-out
consent. That's an oxymoron in my book. It seems it's trying but
hedging its bets. I give the coalition a C-.
The DMA guide is
worse. In 2003, the association gutted the Council for Responsible
E-Mail practices prior to publication, removing references to
permission. At the time, my company resigned in protest. The latest version (PDF download) encourages permission-based e-mail but still reads:
Marketers
or List Owners should only send commercial e-mail to individuals with
whom they have a pre-existing or current business relationship, or when
consent/permission has been obtained.
Reading this you
could be forgiven for thinking that consent is optional. This isn't
good enough in my book. Other sections of the document imply that
permission isn't about doing the right thing by your customers and
prospects but about avoiding blocklisting by ISPs. This definitely
scores an F.
Before moving forward with sophisticated e-mail
marketing strategies, we must get the basics right. Absent a law
requiring consent, we need a united front on consent. That means our
trade groups must make it clear that opt-out is spam and spam is bad
for e-mail, bad for our customers, and bad for us. They must state
without equivocation or prevarication that consent is a requirement and
act to ensure their members adhere to such requirements. Without these
actions, we'll be in just as bad shape in 2010 as we are now.
Until next time,
Derek
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/070522/vclk8-k.html
22-May-2007
Regulation FD Disclosure
On May 18, 2007, ValueClick, Inc. ("ValueClick" or "the Company") filed a Form 8-K which stated that, on May 16, 2007, the Company received a letter from the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") stating that the FTC is conducting an inquiry to determine whether the Company's lead generation activities violate either the Federal Trade Commission Act or the CAN-SPAM Act. Specifically, the FTC is investigating certain ValueClick websites which promise consumers a free gift of substantial value, and the manner in which the Company drives traffic to such websites, in particular through email. The Company defines the use of ValueClick websites which promise consumers a free gift as "promotion-based" lead generation.
As a result of the Form 8-K filed on May 18, 2007, the Company received several calls from analysts regarding the revenue contribution of its lead generation business in general, and its promotion-based sub-category of lead generation in particular, to its Media segment. In response, ValueClick stated that lead generation accounted for more than 60 percent of its Media segment revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2007. In addition, the Company stated that the promotion-based sub-category of lead generation, which is the subject of the FTC inquiry, accounted for less than 30 percent of its Media segment revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2007.
ValueClick provided these financial metrics for informational purposes only, and the Company does not intend to update these financial metrics in future communications with the financial community, including periodic reports filed by the Company.
http://www.spannerworks.com/seotoolkit/search-marketing-news/article/view/silver-surfers-responsive-to-email-marketing/655/
So-called 'silver surfers' could be more responsive to email marketing, it has been suggested.
Matthew Finch, who oversees online marketing for
travel company Warner Breaks, tells E-consultancy his firm has seen
success with emails as a means of targeting the over-50 age group.
He adds that traditional methods of advertising - both online and offline - remain important to older web users.
"We have invested significantly in display
advertising and affiliate marketing to reach new customers - and of
course search marketing," he tells the e-commerce website.
"Email marketing has increased significantly over
the past 12 months as we find our customers are highly receptive to
communication by email."
He recommends a wide-ranging promotional campaign
in order to reach the more mature audience, with internet service
providers and webmail sites among the more successful targets.
A study conducted by Burson-Marsteller recently
revealed that young people with influence over their peers are the most
likely demographic group to respond positively to a commercial message.
The problem with auto responder scripts is that
the number of subscribers you can store will be limited depending on
how much disk space you have with your hosting plan, and you will also
need to backup your list on a regular basis in case a problem occurs
and all of the information is lost.
Its much easier and safer to
use a third party hosted auto responder service because you will not
have to worry about installing a script and your subscribers will be
stored securely on a dedicated server with no limits.
--
...Double opt in lists are becoming more popular because they provide
extra security as subscribers must confirm their email address, but
many people will forget to complete this confirmation which results in
fewer active subscribers so you may prefer to use the single opt in
feature...
“Email coming from marketers is now
accounting for 72 percent of the unwanted bulk email that our company
has to divert away from customers,” said
Dean. “This unwanted bulk email has enormous
cost implications to ISPs and network operators. It has been an annoying
problem to deal with for both us and our customers. Users often
accidentally subscribe to 'Third Party Offerings' but don't know how to
stop it. Now that we allow blocking of 'Commercial Marketers' our costs
have gone down, and customer satisfaction has gone up.”
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070727005079&newsLang=en
“Concerns over list growth aren't necessarily
new, but it's interesting that it's become a top concern for email
marketers," said Elaine O’Gorman, vice
president of strategy for Silverpop. “Growing
a strong database of customers and prospects is obviously the core part
of any strong email marketing program. All elements of sophisticated
email marketing – segmentation,
personalization, dynamic content, lifestyle marketing and more –
depend upon the quantity and quality of the email list.”
Yet while marketers work diligently to add new names to the list, others
drop off or become inactive. List attrition for BtoB marketers averages
2.1 percent a month, according to MarketingSherpa's "Email Marketing
Benchmark Guide 2007." The report indicates BtoC marketers lose, on
average, 2.9 percent of their email addresses each month.
http://www.beneaththecover.com/2007/07/24/re-email-subject-lines-that-work/
By Bryan Eisenberg - Jul 24 , 2007
To Read or Not to Read
The amount of poorly written copy is a real shame. (I have ulterior
motives, so I actually open a lot of junk mail.) What’s worse, though,
is seeing examples of really good copy that will never get read because
the subject line screamed out “IRRELEVANT,” “SPAM,” or, basically,
“DELETE ME.”
There are a few factors you can control when your email message
enters a prospect’s email client: the Subject line, the From address,
the To address, and (on some clients) a preview of the message. (Yes,
if you want to get fussy, the date, too).
The Horse DOES Go Before the Cart
Many marketers treat writing the subject line of an email like a minor
effort. It’s easy to see why. It’s just a few words. Isn’t it the
100-plus words in the copy that do the selling?
Don’t be fooled. If you can’t get your prospect to open your email,
no amount of great copy is going to make a sale. (Remember the first A
in AIDAS?)
So, how can we make those precious few words in the subject line
grab your prospects’ attention, create interest, and make them want to
open your super sales letter? Below are some principles that work. Keep
in mind, though, that as with any copy, they begin losing their impact
if you always follow the same rules.
KISS Them
Remember to KISS
your readers. Keep it short and simple. Write your subject line so that
there are fewer than 10 words; fewer than 5 is even better. Keeping
your subject line down to a few words will make your email seem more
credible.
They’re Tuned to WII-FM, Are You?
Your prospects are always interested in one thing: What’s in it for me? Write with that in mind — which means write about the benefits that matter to them, not features
that matter to you. Remember, your first sale in the email
communication is making them spend their valuable time reading your
solicitation. If you can’t write a subject line that makes them do
that, what makes you think you can make them spend their money?
You Who?
While it’s generally a good thing to use the word “you” in
persuasive copy, it’s a spam predictor in subject lines. Few folks use
the word “you” in emails to colleagues; spam uses it frequently. The
closer your subject line comes to the tone of ordinary email, the more
likely it is that your message will be opened.
Don’t Do It!!!
Don’t use exclamation points at the end of the subject line. Rarely
do you see personal emails that need that kind of “noise” to grab your
attention. Good business writing never does it. It doesn’t need to.
Do It?
Do use question marks, if doing so makes sense. Questions are much more engaging than statements. Wouldn’t you agree?
Would You Buy a Used Car From This Guy?
We have been so inundated with slick sales stuff that it now is an
automatic turnoff. Avoid words like “limited time,” “free,”
“opportunity,” and “only.” Doing so may hook some; it will turn off
many more.
It’s for Me?
You like to feel special? Well, how special do you feel when the
message wasn’t sent to your email address but instead to “undisclosed
recipients” (or somewhere other than to your name or email address)?
If you have a database, use it to address your prospects by name. If
you don’t have a database — first, what are you doing about that? And
second, use your list to accomplish the same thing.
Someone Is Knocking at the Door
People prefer to buy from people, not robots,
autoresponders, or even Web sites. Try to develop a style and
personality in your email communications. And personalize the sender
(you), too. How often do you see an email from “Company XYZ,” and —
since you aren’t ready to buy — you just hit delete? However, that same
message from “Fred Doolittle” makes it seem like it might be worthwhile
reading.
Love at First Sight
Not every email client has a preview, nor does everyone who has a
preview have it set to preview. The important thing to remember,
though, is that whether the first part of the message is seen in a
preview or when the email is first opened, it still has to grab your
prospects’ attention and engage them to keep reading.
The purpose of the first part of persuasive copy is to create in
your customer’s mind what is called the FMI, or first mental image. You
want to inspire your prospects to begin imagining or visualizing
themselves enjoying the benefits of your product or service. It is
essential to write copy that creates a strong FMI, one that draws your
prospect into discovering the real value of your message. And remember,
sometimes less is more.
Step 1 Comes Before Step 2
I see a lot of copy that just “vomits” sales talk right out at the
prospect, forgetting that successful selling is like a romantic
encounter. You can’t go straight to the bedroom without even a first
kiss, and you aren’t going to start kissing till you start talking.
Me Too
I get a lot of email feedback from these columns. I really
appreciate it, but when you write to me, remember that I get more than
250 emails per day. Here’s an idea: Use your emails to me as an
opportunity to practice writing your own great subject lines. I’ll even
publish some of the best ones in a future article.