Thursday, October 29, 2015

Subject Line 'Thank-you' Boosts E-mail Engagement

E-mail marketers are always looking for the magic subect line words to inspire opens. It turns out that a simple "thank you" has that engagement power, per a recent study from Adestra shared by Ragan's PR Daily. E-mails with "thank you" in the subject line have the highest above-average engagement levels (+62%), according to the Adestra study of 3 billion e-mail attempts by 125,000 global campaigns conducted by organizations in four industries (retail/B2C, conferences/events, media/publishing, and B2B). The open-sesame power of "thank you" may be because many automated, transactional messages include the phrase, such as e-mail receipts sent by brands after customers complete online purchases. But, at the other end of the specturm, other often-used subject line words hurt engagement levels, apparently by making the e-mail read sound like work, with the worst-performing words including "journal" (-50%), "forecast" (-47%), "training" (-47%), "whitepaper" (-40%), and "learn" (-36%). More engaging for e-mail recipients were words that suggest timeliness, such as "bulletin" (+32%), "breaking" (+27%), and "order today" (+27%). For the full story: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Study_These_words_will_make_or_break_your_subject_19472.aspx

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Smart Sign-up Tactics Harness E-mail List Power

If your digital marketing can't seem to gain traction with e-mail list building, a recent article from the Content Marketing Institute is a must-read. There's no arguing the acquisition power of e-mail, which is 40 times more powerful at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined, per a recent McKinsey study. But coaxing site visitors and social followers to hand over e-mail addresses in volume seems to stymie many marketers. CMI article author Aaron Orendorff helpfully lists 11 different strategies proven to rev up e-mail list-building. To emulate Buffer, a social media marketing firm that doubled its e-mail list in just 30 days by combining eight strategies. marketers will want to implement a lot more than one of Orendorff's suggested e-mail gathering tools: Carrot content (also known as lead magnets or bribe-to-subscribe content); landing pages; “happy” opt-in buttons (a value pitch beyond "submit"); two-step opt-ins; entry pop-ups; exit pop-ups; “painful” opt-out buttons (opt-out as bad choice); end-of-post forms; in-line forms; sidebar forms; and contact forms. For real-life examples and explanations of how to get the most out of each strategy, read http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/09/sign-up-strategies-email/