Don't just stick to the subject

When an email open rate fails to live up to expectations, the first thing marketers often point the finger at is the subject line. Email marketing companies have been very active in promoting the ability to carry out simple A/B testing on subject lines and it’s great to see that most businesses build this into all email campaigns (note, if you don’t, you really should!).

But subject line is only one part of the influencing factors on open rate. Let’s look at a few others to consider.

“From” name

Users are more likely to open emails from people they know or recognise. Why not trial using a real name rather than your brand name? If you’ve got a famous face associated to the company or a well-know CEO, send from them. Perhaps test the difference in using women’s names versus men’s names. Even better, see if men are more receptive to male senders and vice versa.

“From” address

Don’t just stick with the old, info@companyname.com. Again, incorporate a real name. Perhaps even personalise it with the name of the recipient?

Broadcast day

I’m often asked by bosses, “What’s the best day to send emails on?” As with all these sorts of questions, my answer’s always, “I don’t know, let’s test it”. I’ve worked at companies who found Saturday to be the best, whilst at others I’ve had great success on Mondays. Trial it and find out what’s best for you.

Time of send

Same as the above really! The general rule of thumb used to be to make sure that you got your email to people when they’re on their computer. With the rise of mobile devices, I’m not sure that this is necessarily correct anymore – we’re picking up emails at all hours, but if your call to action leads to a site that isn’t mobile optimised, you’re going to have more success with the classic approach.

Of course, the above are all just influencing factors of one metric (not even a KPI) in your email reporting. The real path to email marketing success still relies on relevancy.

Social mania

I saw the first of these videos a few years ago. It was shown to me (and the rest of the department), by an excited Marketing Director who felt it was powerful enough to justify running headlong into social media. It was then shared again with me by an excited IT Director who finally felt he (and his industry) had been given the green light to leave the server cupboard and get stuck into this marketing malarkey we’d been fiddling with.

Their collective response to the video was, “We must do this now.”

I feel the correct response to the video should have been, “So what?”

These videos have surely been responsible for more empty Facebook walls, barren Twitter feeds and disappointed customers than anything else in the history of online marketing.

I have no problem with the statistics, they’re very interesting. Some are truly remarkable. But they don’t contain even the smallest justification for social media in your marketing mix. Before bringing anything new in, the two burning questions are;

“How will it benefit my business?” and “How will it benefit my customers?”

You’ll understand your audience’s use of social media and what their expectations might be. You’ll have formatted a publishing schedule to outline how you’ll be feeding this hungry social beast. You’ll have a list of clear measurable outcomes targeted and understood. You’ll be doing this because you know what you want.

You won’t be doing this because Ashton Kutcher has 6,693,643 followers.