Research Offers Five Clues to E-mail Success

While chasing the holy grail of e-mail response, marketers can get lost in a forest of subject line and offer gimmicks.  Here's some helpful guidance that Direct Marketing News shared from a recent study by Retention Science, a marketing platform provider. Based on Retention Science's analysis of one billion e-mails, the article can distill five tips for success. Tip No. 1 is that percent signs trump dollar signs: According to Retention Science, 38% of customers are more likely to click on e-mails containing percent-off offers than on dollar-off deals, and 47% are more likely to convert in response to percent-off. Tip No. 2 is that mystery is better than excitement in subject line punctuation: Subject lines containing question marks have a 44% higher open rate than those containing exclamation marks. Tip No. 3 is that brevity is the soul of response: Retention Science found that e-mails containing subject lines with six to 10 words generated the highest open rates, at 21%, compared with a 14% open rate for messages with 11- to 15-word subject lines. Tip No. 4 is that timing matters--depending on whether the goal is click-through, conversion or retention. While open rates are fairly consistent year-round, click-through rates jump during the early holiday months, rising to 30% in October and 27% in November, and conversion peaks in July, with a rate 21% higher than average. But then e-mail list retention hits its nadir in August, with unsubscribes at a 28% rate. And Tip No. 5 is that novelty may spur opens, but familiarity breeds clicks. A novelty item in the subject line yields a 6% lift in open rates, but necessities in the e-mail body (such as groceries) earn a 10% higher click-through rate than featuring specialty items, even if those special items won an open for the subject line. For more on the Retention Science study, read http://www.dmnews.com/email-marketing/how-to-send-the-almost-perfect-email/article/449482/