According to Adestra: With the growth in popular content aggregators, many readers don’t bother to sign up for newsletters anymore. For B2B publishers particularly, the word ‘newsletter’ shows a strong negative effect on open rates (-11.2%) and click rates (-52.6%.), while ‘Alert’ performs much better +32.9% opens and +35.7% clicks, and ‘Breaking’ shows similar results with +35.4% opens and +77.6% clicks. Both great action words, they create urgency among reader and give the impression that the news cannot be missed.
For B2C publishers ‘Review’ and ‘Daily’ test strongly as people are no longer after repurposed web content, what they want are unique, special things. Also users devour ‘video’ content – this can lift click rates by 96.6%. However, avoid asking questions as this has a negative impact on results. Dealing with money subjects is difficult – using ‘£’, ‘Discount’, ‘Free’, ‘Half Price’ can have negative results, the key here is to mix up subject lines to monetise content.
A subject line is one of the main things under an email marketer’s control to influence their customers’ behaviour in the publishing sector. Having an ineffective, confusing or overly-clever subject line delivers a poor user experience for the online journey.
In the last couple of years, the way consumers interact with email has changed drastically. Much like the broader web, email is now all about usability. The 2013 Adestra Email Subject Line Analysis report is a survey of over 2.2 billion emails, from over 90,000 campaigns, to identify trends in subject lines. These cover keywords and phrases that recipients respond to better OR are overused and ineffective for a sector.
With the volumes of emails mushrooming and open and click through rates difficult to maintain, don’t forget even if the campaigns aren’t opened, the subject line is still performing - as they deliver key brand and product information to customers’ inboxes.
Parry Malm, Account Director at Adestra, says: “Subject line strategy should be seen as a series of branding tools over a period of time, not just one-offs to drive short term response. With usability firmly in mind, there are key words and phrases that statistically help drive response in your sector, try them and test them - constant testing is vital to success.”
For the full report, go to www.adestra.com/subjectlinepublishing
