The Whitelist

Time and again in this email marketing blog, we preach relevance as key to email marketing ROI.

But what is relevant? Relevant to me could be ridiculous to you.

Regardless of varying interpretations of the word’s meaning, the concept remains critical to your email marketing success. So let’s clarify.

Relevant email marketing means your email marketing subscriber gets emails from you when she wants, how she wants and with information she wants.
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Quick, what are two elements of your email marketing campaign you can easily tweak to improve your email marketing ROI?

If you guessed subject line and email body, you’re right…or maybe you already got a peek at this month’s ClickMail Marketer.

Although there are other ways to measure the effectiveness of your email marketing, email marketers still do need to pay attention to open rates and click throughs. And the two factors which will influence those metrics the most are 1) email subject lines and 2) email copywriting in the body of the email.
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The other day we saw an article that dismissed the use of numbers as the basis for an article. We’ve all seen these types of articles: 100 Ways to Optimize Your Web Site; 10 Tips for Better Email Subject Lines; 43 Things You Should Know About Email Marketing. And so on.

The author’s point was, be careful about these types of headlines because they often lead you to articles that lack substance. The articles are usually just recycled information, he claimed.
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Email subject lines: Now there’s a topic email marketers can debate at a cocktail party! Problem is, for all the attention the topic gets, the subject line isn’t necessarily the first thing your recipients look at when deciding whether or not to open your email.

The “From” line might be.
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If you read this blog with any regularity, you’ve seen plenty of references to email best practices. Pick any facet of email marketing, and you’ll find numerous email best practices you should adhere to in order to maximize your email marketing ROI: email copywriting, email subject lines, email delivery, email everything…

…including email design.
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Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, social media, social networking, tagging, blogging…there’s a lot of noise going on in the online marketing world. Are you letting it pull your focus away from your email marketing efforts? Beware of the latest and greatest shiny new thing if you haven’t yet done all you can to maximize your email marketing ROI.

Chances are, with all the moving parts that make up email marketing, there are some moving parts of your own email marketing campaign that can use some refinement. Rather than look outside of your existing email marketing program to try to up your open rates, click throughs and conversions, like adding video or a link to Facebook or something like that, first look inside to see where you can tweak and improve…and increase your email marketing ROI.
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It seems we’re all after the subject line Holy Grail. Everyone wants to know the ideal subject line length for maximizing open rates. But based on what I’ve been reading lately, it’s not cut and dry. It depends on what you really want to maximize: your open rates or your click throughs.

Studies are showing that although shorter subject lines (often it’s less 35 characters or seven words) work best for increasing your open rates. But guess what? Longer subject lines are better for increasing your click through rates! And possibly your conversions.

What happens is this: A longer subject line can be more specific and therefore more relevant to a smaller segment of your audience. As a result, fewer people open the email, but those that do are more interested in your offer, and therefore more likely to convert.

I doubt we’ll ever have a guaranteed email subject line length but there’s one thing I can guarantee: The way to know what works is to test, test, test, test. Remember, email marketers, in your world, testing is much more doable than in the print marketer’s world. Take advantage of that ability to boost your email marketing ROI.

For more on how to write an email subject line, see the useful guide from Lyris: “Email Subject Lines: 15 Rules to Write Them Right.” It’s available on the ClickMail Web site at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/pdfs/Lyris_15Rules_for_Subject_Lines.pdf.