Thursday, July 11, 2013

Wordy E-mails Work for Some Audiences

Brevity may be the rule for most successful e-mailers, but certain target audiences may respond to a wordier approach. Who's Mailing What, which tracks 220 e-mail categories, reported recently that while most companies send e-mails with a word count below 250, a few categories are markedly more verbose. Social action fundraising e-mails topped the chart in terms of word count, weighing in with an average of 647 words to persuade donors to open their checkbooks. The second most wordy category was seminars/conferences with a 619 word count to convince prospects of the value of high-cost attendance. Also above 350 words per email were religious magazines, political fundraising, special interest magazines, general newsletters and business/financial magazines. The other 212 categories had word counts of 300 or less. See the report at http://www.directmarketingiq.com/slideshow/email-marketing-word-count-trends-companies-including-fundraisers-magazines

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Tablets Deliver More Ad Clicks Than Smartphones

Tablets are star performers for mobile ad campaigns. Comparing the performance of ads on smartphones and tablets in December 2012, mobile ad-buying platform Adfonic found that tablet ads generally performed better across a range of metrics and industries. Branding campaigns, in particular, garnered 250% higher click-through rates on tablets compared with smartphones. Even direct-response campaigns performed better on average with tablets than smartphones, though the margin was not as high as with branding campaigns. Industries needing rich visual content -- such as fashion, lifestyle and health categories -- saw click-through rates double on tablets. Click-through rates for entertainment and media, and for the travel category, rose by 81% and 66%, respectively, when served to tablets. Not every industry did better with tablets. Legal and automotive ads got fewer clicks on tablets than on smartphones, and the worst performers on tablets were the fast-moving consumer goods and retail industry, along with the social and dating category. Technology, which is second only to entertainment and media in percentage of mobile dollars spent, performed about equally on tablets vs. smartphones. For more on the study, see the emarketer.com article at http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Ad-Clicks-Tablets-Outperform-Smartphones/1009772