email optimization

Posts Tagged ‘email optimization’

Email subject lines – size matters

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Email in Inbox Excuse the bawdy reference, but it does the job. It gets attention while using the fewest characters possible. Which is the approach to take with email subject lines. A no-brainer? Perhaps. But if you look at your own in-box, whether it’s on Outlook, Mail, Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, you’ll quickly see how some subject lines render more completely than others. Some will manage to get the whole message across while others get truncated, leaving off critical pieces of information. This can be due to the email client/provider, in which subject line character limits may range between 40-50 characters. Or it can be due to the the size of the user’s screen.

Consider this 72-character subject line, and see what happens as it begins to get truncated.

New herbal fresh soap available at special price at your local Harry’s (full length)

New herbal fresh soap available at special price a (50 characters)

New herbal fresh soap available at speci (40 characters)

Also, be sure to place as much critical information at the beginning of your subject line, rather than at the end as a hedge against important content being truncated. In the examples above, the name of the retailer gets chopped off, as does the “special price” reference in the 40-character version. Those are pretty important pieces of information that the marketer surely would want front and center.

In a recent Email Marketing Reports post, Mark Brownlow offers up this free Excel spreadsheet that shows you how your subject line looks at any length between 10 and 125 characters. It’s a great tool that’s definitely worth downloading.

Bottom Line

When writing email subject lines, keep character count limitations in mind.
Put the most important information up front.

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Tags: Email Marketing, email optimization, Email subject line, Gmail, Hotmail, Mark Brownlow, red rocket LA, Scott Posner
Posted in Business, Email Marketing, General, Marketing/Advertising | No Comments »

It looks good, but can they see it? HTML text versus graphics in emails

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

In the early days of email marketing, one could simply place a well executed graphic into an email template, deploy and be reasonably certain that what the recipient would see is what was sent. Not so today.

With so many different email programs – each with a different level of graphical support – plus spam filters becoming increasingly more sensitive, there’s a good chance that your images will be blocked.

The problem with images
Most email programs turn images off by default so when recipients first see your message, they will be looking at a bunch of red Xs instead of what you intended them to see. Coding your email with HTML text allows recipients to partially read your message even if images are blocked. For example, let’s say you’re creating an email to promote a sales event and your agency has designed a fantastic logo in support of the event. You want that graphic in your communication because it likely ties into your other marketing materials. No problem, just make sure that in addition to this logo, the name of the event is referenced prominently using HTML text. That way, if the logo is blocked, the recipient will still receive the critical information.

Many spam filters analyze the text-to-image ratio in a message and will block messages that are made up mostly of images. Meaning that the flyer you printed and then repurposed into a single image email to save money, well it may get flagged as spam.

Some web-based email platforms, such as AOL and Hotmail, do not always support image maps. As a result, your recipients may be able to see your email fine, but could be unable to click through to your site, microsite, or wherever else the email links direct them.

Solution: find the right balance between images and HTML text
Given these challenges, you can still design an effective email that looks great and works as it’s intended. Although you don’t want to over do it with imagery for the reasons noted above, you also don’t want to create an email that’s nothing more than text. It will bore the recipient and reflect poorly on your organization.

Avoid using fancy display fonts since they’re not supported on all computers. Instead, stick with standard fonts that come installed on most Windows-based machines and Macs. Some tried and true choices include Helvetica, Arial, Veranda, Times New Roman and Courier.

Finally, make sure to include critical text in the top portion of the email (above the fold). That way, recipients who use the preview pane will see your key points of communication, even if the images are blocked.

The bottom line
A beautiful email isn’t worth the 1s and 0s it was created with if the recipient sees nothing more than red Xs. However, by finding the right balance of HTML text and images, you can ensure that your message gets the point across clearly and effectively.

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Tags: email optimization, HTML vs graphics, image maps, red rocket LA, tex to image ratio
Posted in Business, Email Marketing, General, Marketing/Advertising, Technology, optimization | No Comments »

Testing, testing: The case for A/B email testing

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Image courtesy of smoothtransitionslawblog.com

We’re all aware that email marketing is one of the most cost efficient and effective ways to reach your target audience. But if you’re not conducting A/B tests, you could be short changing your open rates, click-through rates and conversions. Creating two different versions (A and B) of your email and sending each to a different half of your database allows you to easily see what resonates with your target and what doesn’t.

Treat it like science
A/B testing provides an objective way of evaluating message effectiveness in what is traditionally an intuitive creative process. As such, it’s important to approach your tests like a true science experiment. First, send out a well executed eblast that will serve as your benchmark, against which you’ll measure the results of your A/B test.

The next step is to optimize/modify two new versions of the eblast to see how the change impacts the results. For example, you may want to experiment with two different subject lines, the placement of a button, the call to action, or simply the background color. What’s important to remember here is that for a true A/B test, you should only test one change at a time. That way you can clearly determine which change is influencing the target’s behavior.

See what pulls
Once you have these two new and different versions, deploy each to one half of your database and see how the results compare to your benchmark figures. Look at how many people opened each email, clicked through and converted across the call to action. This analysis will help you identify fallout points which influence where and what you should focus on for subsequent A/B tests. From there, you can continue to modify the message or design in your quest for even better results. But remember, only one change at a time.

Broader application
A/B testing isn’t just for eblasts. You can apply the same techniques to landing pages, web banners, paid search ads and more.

The bottom line
A/B testing makes sense for a number of reasons. It allows you to prove a point that may not have been supported by empirical data in the past, e.g. this headline will pull better than that one. Plus, it adds a level of accountability to the process which may, eventually, help you build a bigger interactive marketing budget. And who couldn’t use that?

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