MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

In a recent Web clinic planning meeting, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO, MECLABS, discussed some elements that determine how effective a subject line is …

In Wednesday’s free Web clinic, “Subject Lines Tested: How to write subject lines that double your clickthrough rate,” Flint will cover all four elements that can help you determine the effectiveness of your subject lines.

Plus, we’ll review the results of the subject line test the MarketingExperiments blog audience participated in, and see what greater lessons can be learned from the results.

Related Resources

“Subject Lines Tested: How to write subject lines that double your clickthrough rate” — Web clinic on May 16, 4:00–5:00 p.m. EDT

Email Testing: Subject line increases opens 12.7% … here’s why we’ll never use it again

Subject Line Test: 125% more unique clickthroughs

Email Subject Lines: Longer subject increases opens 8.2%

Email Testing: More specific subject line improves open rate by more than 35%

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, here are the most (and least) effective email elements to test and optimize …

Click to enlarge

So, how can you use this information to improve your own testing efforts? The MarketingExperiments Email Messaging Optimization Index heuristic is a tool to help organize your thinking and analysis of your email marketing tests …

eme = rv(of + i) – (f + a) ^©

Wherein:

eme = email messaging effectiveness index
rv = relevance to the consumer
of = offer value (why)
i = incentive to take action
f = friction elements of process
a = anxiety about entering information

The MarketingExperiments Email Messaging Online Course teaches the full heuristic, but at a very high level, the heuristic helps you focus on the positive and negative forces that can affect your email messaging effectiveness. Let’s see how the heuristic relates to the top two most effective elements from the MarketingSherpa research (MarketingSherpa, like MarketingExperiments, is a MECLABS company).

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The purpose of a subject line is to get an open. However, the purpose of a subject line is not only to get an open. In our recent subject line contest, there were some curious submissions that made me think this blog post was necessary:

• Mom told me to wear clean underwear in case I was in an accident. I wish she had told me about this too …
• A priest, a rabbi and a MECLABS LPO expert walk into a bar in Denver …
• RE: The video showed a bald man. Why?
• 1 Thing You MUST Do in Denver Before You Die
• Want to find the end of a rainbow AND the pot of gold?
• Denver Flight #ME430 [Confirm your seat]
• Open &; Enjoy Real Bacon Smell…
• This is your brain on email.
• What the #@*? What should you test next?

I know some of these are likely meant as jokes, but if the amount of misleading subject lines that fill my own inbox every day is any indication, many of them are probably serious.

The road to unsubscribes is paved by good intentions

And I don’t mean to pick on our contest entrants. If fact, I’m going to show you a subject line test I ran making this same mistake later in this post. Even in the blog post, “Announcing the Winner of the Email Subject Line Copywriting Contest!” by Sonia Simone, CMO, Copyblogger Media, she discusses how I pushed back on one of her selections because I was worried it was misleading …

For example, we really liked the header “Testing — does this link work for you?” (We defined that one as a Curiosity headline.) But MECLABS had some concerns that the element of trickery would annoy their subscribers and lead to unsubscribes … definitely not the result we were after.

So why do we, as marketers, come up with these misleading subject lines? Well, I think our intentions are in the correct place: We’re simply looking to stand out in a crowded marketplace. However …

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The results are in. A few weeks ago, we asked the MarketingExperiments blog community and the Copyblogger community for help on a subject line test. Today we’ll look at the process we went through, the results, and what you can learn from it all.

Background

Through a blog post on the MarketingExperiments blog and a blog post on Copyblogger, we asked for your subject line test ideas for an email that promoted Optimization Summit 2012 in Denver. We received 409 entries through the MarketingExperiments blog and 492 entries through Copyblogger.

Then came the culling.

Nathan Thompson, Senior Manager, Research and Strategy, MECLABS Conversion Group, was the lead judge for the entries on our blog, and Sonia Simone, CMO, Copyblogger Media, LLC, led her team’s effort (Sonia wrote about their process today on Copyblogger).

“Some were clever, some were text-book marketing, and others were, well … weird,” Nathan said.

“Our process for cutting down the list involved removing those that were factually incorrect first as we didn’t want to incite a riot among our readers once they opened the email and realized we had tricked them. Then we removed those that were too long, too confusing or unclear.”

Once the list was narrowed down to the acceptable subject lines, Nathan and the MECLABS Conversion Group team began grouping them into categories based on what the subject lines were attempting to convey:

• Incentive
• Curiosity
• Value exchange
• Newsworthiness
• Etc.

“Then we voted on the subject lines we felt were the best representation of each of these categories,” Nathan said.

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As we gear up to test the subject lines suggested by you, the MarketingExperiments blog reader, in our recent contest, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at some email testing research conducted by our sister company, MarketingSherpa:

This research chart, from the MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook, packs a lot of interesting information in a small amount of space, so let’s break down just the most common, most effective and easiest elements to test …

  Read more…

Subject lines are by far the easiest element of your email marketing to test. Heck, probably the easiest element to test period.

And it’s a good thing too. There’s a lot you can learn about your audience from testing subject lines:

• What elements of your value proposition are most appealing?
• Do you have to offer an incentive to get your customers to take even a basic action?
• If so, which incentive works best?

But here’s another thing about subject line testing … sometimes you just hit a wall. To quote The Barenaked Ladies, sometimes you just feel like, “It’s all been done.”

HOW DO YOU BREAK THROUGH THIS WALL?

As a one-man wolf pack — an individual copywriter or marketer writing subject lines — sometimes you simply run out of ways to rearrange a few characters in a small space. At these times, you need to reach out and get fresh, outside test ideas to push the envelope:

• Designers
• IT
• Sales
• Customer Service
• Your marketing peers within (and outside) your company
• Your audience

This is why we’re turning to you today. We’ve written a lot (and I mean a lot) of subject lines, and are looking for a truly fresh perspective for an upcoming marketing send about Optimization Summit 2012 in Denver.

And we’ll make it worth your while. The winning subject line in our test will receive a free ticket to Optimization Summit 2012 plus a free MarketingExperiments Landing Page Optimization Online Course. That’s a $1,900 value.

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