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

Editor’s Note: The MarketingExperiments community is an interactive group with a great deal of questions and answers between marketers and their peers as well as with the MarketingExperiments staff. Occasionally we publish these interactions on the blog when we think there is a particularly good question that our readers can benefit from…

QUESTION:

I recently watched The Five Best Ways to Optimise Email Response seminar by Dr Flint McGlaughlin. I found it extremely enlightening and it provided a lot of food for thought. However, I have a quick question with regards to slide no. 22.

I appreciate your time and I’m sure you receive plenty of mailings of this nature; therefore I will get straight to the point.

In this slide, the recommendation is to change the subject line of the mailing from “Thank You For Making Us Your Florist Of Choice” to “15% Off – Our Way Of Saying Thank You!”

I understand why the wording would be changed to make it more endearing to the receiver but I wondered if the symbols added would increase the risk of the mailing being filtered and more inclined to be highlighted as spam – therefore reducing the success of the mailing.

In my experience I steer clear of any symbols in the subject line when sending large mail shots, especially %, ! and £. Am I being too cautious?

Kind regards,

Chris, BA(hons) Business & Marketing
Marketing
London Read more…

If you have been following the blog over the past few weeks, you already know that Dr. Flint McGlaughlin recently taught live on “The 5 Best Ways to Optimize Email Response” at the 2010 MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami.

“The discomfort was worth it by all accounts!”

The session was very lively and included on-the-spot optimization of audience-submitted emails. Some even suggested cutting lunch to continue with more live optimization. You can watch a replay of the complete presentation below and here are a couple reviews from live attendees:

“Even if this was the third time I attended one of his lectures, I still learn from each new session. Flint is a tremendous speaker and his mathematical approach on all email marketing aspects based on serious testing is amazing.” – Kenny Van Beeck, EmailGarage

“After a reported late influx of attendees, people took to sitting on the floor to listen to the first session, delivered by Dr Flint McGlaughlin. The discomfort was worth it by all accounts!” – Mick Griffin, Get Response Read more…