VIDEO: The Opposite of Glenn

Posted on 06. May, 2012 by in Blog, consulting, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

So, in case you were wondering what it’s like to coach with Glenn, the best way I could describe it is the POLAR OPPOSITE OF THIS VIDEO:

See…

Even though I’m a psychologist by training…

And even though there are certainly elements of business coaching which require helping people overcome mindset and relationship issues…

The truth is that the vast majority of my coaching work is focused on solving business problems.

Not that I don’t value relationship coaching…

I actually kind of miss doing it in many respects. (I got a lot of “stories inside me” during those years… and it was amazing to me how many ways there were of solving life’s problems that you’d NEVER think of if you didn’t spend time speaking intimately with dozens of people every day)

But that’s simply not what I do now.

I help people build businesses, plain and simple.

Of course I’m kind, considerate, reasonably funny, and it’s not unheard of for me to spend a few minutes on the phone and/or Skype with my clients helping them with personal issues…

But let’s face it, you’re not following me here as a psychologist, you’re following me as a marketer.

And I’m a damn good one at that!

Anyway, I’ve decided to open the coaching program for a little while because I really like the people (and business opportunities) it’s brought into my life.

So if you’ve been thinking about it, well, then I just “really want to make that space in the universe for you”

Dr. G :-)



A Simple Profit Bump You’re Almost Definitely Overlooking!

Posted on 19. Apr, 2012 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Your Web Sales Hero has been THINKING HARD lately…

And I’ve figured out something SIMPLE which can bump your profits that 99% of marketers overlook…

How do I know most marketers ignore it?

Because up until very recently I overlooked it too…

And so did most of the major marketers I’m friendly with…

Know what it is?  It’s…

FILE NAMES.

That’s right, file names!

Most people spend an eternity building and editing their salesletters, obsessing over the subject lines in their email, writing just the right headline, etc…. just to get people to consume a digital product.

Yet when they provide those digital files, they neglect three very critical facts…

1) The file has to be CONSUMED in order to move the prospect or customer to the next step in the ascension process and…

2) Most people don’t consume files immediately.  Most save their files to consume at a later date, which can be weeks, months, or even years in the future.  (Long after they’ve forgotten why they downloaded it!)

3) The file is not gonna be the ONLY file on the prospect’s hard drive by a long shot.

As a result, despite working so hard to MOTIVATE the consumer to purchase and download the file–or to download for free when it’s a prospecting give away–they abandon the prospect on that crucial “next rung of the monkey bars” on the path to  more purchasing.

That’s why you’ve got files on your hard drive with mostly meaningless names like…

  • SavedPhoneRecording.mp3
  • Traffic-2-12-2010.pdf
  • Teleconference-4-5-2012.mp3

What should you do instead?

THINK OF THE FILE NAME AS THE HEADLINE FOR THE FILE.

It’s job is to stand out in a sea of meaningless files on the prospect hard drive, grab attention, and telegraph to the prospect “You’ve just got to consume this right now!”

Fortunately almost nobody else is using file names like this, so the job is a lot easier than standing out online.

Here are some good examples I’ve used in the past for my valuable FREE downloads (by the way, I’ve had MANY people tell me they got their first bit of traction online from this stuff over the years so if you’ve missed any of them, they’re definitely worth downloading!):

Now here’s the thing…

I dare you to download any of these and not at least open them up…

Maybe you won’t do it today…

And maybe not tomorrow…

But if I can get you to save it to your hard drive, eventually you’ll be browsing the folders in your hard drive, maybe doing a little “computer housecleaning”, and you’ll come across one of these that sticks out like a red balloon in a sea of white ones.

And then…

I’ll getcha!  (And you’ll be happy I did)

Am I right or am I right?

I’m right!

Onwards and Upwards My Fine Marketing Friends…

You can clear away SO much confusion if you’ll just take the time to master a few fundamental conversion principles.  And now you can watch me do it LIVE on site after site.  (Get started as of the time of this post for less than $5)

Dr. Glenn :-)

Your “Web Sales Hero(tm)”



Microsoft vs. Google

Posted on 08. Mar, 2012 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

MONSTER WARS: Microsoft vs. Google.

Curious what you all think? (Comments below please)



Weird Psychological Marketing Fact #1

Posted on 27. Dec, 2011 by in Blog, conversion, Copywriting, Emotional Marketing, Hyper Responsive Marketing, Information Marketing, Inspiration, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

I thought I’d end 2011 with a series of contrarian psychological marketing insights.  After all, what good’s  being a marketing shrink if you don’t get to talk about it, right?

Seriously though, there are a few things I think marketers casually banty about as if they were psychological fact which really bother me… And there are others which tell only HALF the story.

So let’s start there with…

UNUSUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL MARKETING FACT #1: “Impulse Isn’t Everything”

Impulse isn’t everything.

Yes, it’s true you’ve gotta appeal to the Lizard Brain with greed, lust, envy, jealousy, etc in order to induce action on your offer. (Which is one of the reasons I’m fond of saying “try to appeal to the lizard brain without seeming like a lizard”)

But the other half of the story is,  this only produces TRIAL BUT NOT NECESSARILY REPEAT…

Satisfying the lizard brain is only PART of what we need in this world…

As sappy as it sounds, the other half is help mastering our environments, our relationships, our place in society, and life as a whole.

Don’t get me wrong, you won’t get ANYWHERE trying to sell people self-actualization, self-improvement, or simple self-mastery solutions unless you can link them to the lizard brain…

It’s just that lizard brain satisfaction is a necessary but not sufficient condition for REPEAT purchase and customer loyalty.

So it’s not enough to sell luster and shine if you’re selling shampoo…

Or even to sell the emotional end benefit (I feel attractive)…

To really take the market you need to sell the aspirational character… how your product is going to MAKE YOUR PROSPECT INTO THE PERSON THEY WANT TO BE…

Think L’Oreal “Because You’re Worth It”: when a woman buys L’Oreal, she’s not just trying to look sexy, she’s supporting a character trait which translates to self-care across a wide variety of life areas… she’ll also more likely invest in vitamins, a gym membership, life insurance, a spa, etc

Or think Gillette “The Best a Man Can Get”:  a guy’s not just buying Gillette razors to get the cleanest shave possible, or to attract a desired mate… he’s partaking of the best the world has to offer alpha males, and this informs WHO he wants to be across market categories

Or Intel “Intel Inside”:  when you buy Intel, you’re not just getting a high speed processor, you’re committing (whether you know it or not) to recognizing, developing, and leveraging the value of intelligence across many areas of your life…

Or Kodak “Share the Moments, Share the Life”:  when you buy Kodak, you’re not just getting sharp pictures, or even crystallizing memories… you’re committing to family and community as a value you want to demonstrate as a person… it enhances your sense of participation in life with others, and re-affirms your desire to build more of these relationships as part of WHO YOU ARE AS A PERSON…

See what I mean?

These brands engender MASSIVE REPEAT PURCHASE and loyalty because they’ve managed to integrate themselves with the user’s aspirational self image!

What you should be asking yourself now is, WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOES YOUR PROSPECT BECOME when they purchase your product or service?   Is your advertising set up to support this message?

Onward and Upward in 2012,

Dr. G :-)

PS – When you join Hyper Responsive Marketing Secrets you affirm yourself as a person who gets enormous leverage for their  time  and consistently “organizes and executes around priorities” because you know HALF your profits are driven by only ONE in 2,000 visitors.   This radical paradigm shift not only transforms your business, but syncs with your commitment to apply the 80/20 rule throughout your life to achieve maximum results with minimum time.   Join now

PPS – Keep your eyes glued to your inbox for “weird psychological marketing fact #2″, coming soon.



The from line as sacred cow: can you change it? Should you?

Posted on 04. Oct, 2011 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

You can change your religion and nationality.

You can change your mind, hair and underwear.

You can even change your gender.

But you cannot (CANNOT!) change your from name.

At least you’d think so based on how most people react when you make the suggestion.

They’re not wrong, but they’re not completely right either: I changed my newsletter’s from line and improved results, as I’ll show below.

What are we changing?

First we need to clarify what exactly we’re changing.

Every email carries with it various bits of information to say where it came from. This includes such things as the sender’s name and email address.

Most email software and webmail services display the “friendly” version of the sender’s identity in the inbox, i.e. the sender’s name:

from lines 1

So viewing, for example, my newsletter in a typical inbox would show a sender name of:

“Email Marketing Reports”

In this post, I’m only talking about changing this friendly from/sender name, not your sender email address: that’s a topic for another day.

Why you should not change your from line

The main issue with the from line is recognition…existing subscribers have got used to associating a certain from line with your emails.

Most people argue that changing the from line breaks this recognition: emails may then be ignored or even marked as spam (eek!), if the recipient decides some unknown sender has sent them unsolicited commercial email.

This argument is perfectly logical. (But see the P.S. at the end of the post for a surprise!)

However, the problem is not changing your from line per se, but how you change it.

Every criticism of a from line change I have read refers to a case where the from line has changed to something largely unrecognizable to most recipients. Like if email from “Email Marketing Reports” suddenly came from “David Macmillan”.

Nobody knows who David Macmillan is.

But it’s not the same as saying you cannot change your from line at all. Who says the new sender name has to be an unrecognizable one?

Why you should change your from line

The from line plays a major role in getting people to give your message attention. Assuming you send emails worth that attention, then you want people to recognize those emails…which starts with a recognizable sender name.

Equally the value of that recognition increases, the closer the relationship between recipient and sender (again, always assuming the recipient sees value in the messages).

For most businesses, there is no personal relationship between sender and recipient. So most marketing emails therefore come from a company or brand name to exploit the recognition factor (see the earlier image for examples).

So why would you ever want to change this from line?

Of course there are times when a brand, company or newsletter name changes…but these forced changes to something potentially unrecognizable are not what I’m talking about and need their own special approach.

My question is this: when would you voluntarily change your from line?

In an ideal world, we’d have optimized our from line on Day 1. Call me a pessimist, but this isn’t an ideal world.

Like me, you may have come up with a from name at the beginning of an email program and then bowed to the Goddess of No Change and left it untouched, even though in retrospect it was not the best choice of sender name. Like some of these ones from my Gmail inbox:

from lines 2

You might want to move from a generic sender name (like “marketing”) to a recognizable one.

Or you might want to use a person’s or personality’s name to try and get a bigger connection to the reader. This could work well in B2B where the sender might be the recipient’s account manager.

The first case seems logical. The second is a little more complicated: in the best case scenario, everyone recognizes the new “human” sender and you get a results boost. In the worst case, the person’s name is meaningless and results tumble (but see later).

So how about we test? We just need to make sure that:

1. The new from line is as recognizable as possible

2. Other recognition elements are built into the email

Let’s see how that looks in practice.

A real-world example and test results

As I stated, my newsletter comes with a sender name of “Email Marketing Reports”.

Now every issue starts with an editorial signed by “Mark” (me) and every landing page features an article written by “Mark Brownlow”. And I try and keep the tone of the emails and the articles fairly conversational.

Could I get a response boost by using my name as the from line, rather than the rather unexciting website name?

Good question.

“Email Marketing Reports” is hardly a household name in its own right, but it’s surely more recognizable than “Mark Brownlow”: plenty of readers won’t have any kind of relationship with me. Will my name simply bemuse people?

Or will the value of a more human from line outweigh recognition problems? Are there perhaps enough people on the list who do know my name?

The only way to know the overall impact of such a change is to test.

But…instead of testing “Mark Brownlow”, I tested “Mark at Email Marketing Reports”.

A name is in there AND Email Marketing Reports, hopefully addressing recognition issues, but also adding that human touch.

I also ensured the rest of the email was helping recognition: the subject line also has “Email Marketing Reports” in it, and there’s a branded logo and text in the area typically revealed in email preview panes.

So…the results:

from lines 3

Oh!

(Unique CTR was up 19% with the new from line, too, but not enough to be considered statistically significant.)

Now this is a very specific example, so you certainly could not say it was a general lesson on what from lines are best. My circumstances (not a household brand name, some name recognition among recipients) are probably different to yours.

Equally, I’m not convinced those improvements will hold in the long-term: there may be curiosity and novelty factors at play.

Also, if the emails don’t carry enough of a personal touch from me, then the new from line may actually start to hurt results by raising expectations that are then not met.

But the results do tell us that voluntary, unannounced from line changes do not automatically mean campaign disasters: they are another potential tactic to use as you look to boost your email results.

Summary

1. Consider a voluntary from line change only when you have good reason to believe it might lift results

2. Avoid changing to something that is unrecognizable

3. Ensure other elements of the email are optimized to keep recognition high – preheader, logos, preview pane, subject line etc.

4. Test

P.S.

Here’s a little spanner to throw into our theory.

If you made the sender the name of a random person, you’d expect results to tank and spam reports to rocket.

A few years ago, a reader noted that their experience suggested the opposite was true: a name (even a fake one) boosted opens and clicks…also over a longer period.

See the original blog post and (particularly) comments for details.

This raises questions like:

Just how quickly do people mark email as spam (people, not email marketers who are more finely tuned to the whole issue)?

Do they really do so without even glancing at the subject line or content, before making their decision? If no, is there less risk than we always imagine with from line changes?

How do from line changes work in the long run?

How often could/should you change a good from line (if at all)? Is there potential to use variations on a *recognizable* theme to keep people on their inbox toes?

What about when people have set up filters based on the sender name: how do they react when these filters break? How many people actually use such filters?

Can from line changes help when people are tired of your emails or have gone inactive (see this post for details)?

I’ll leave those for you to ponder!

What’s your view/experience on voluntary from line changes?

Holiday email marketing resources 2011

Posted on 23. Sep, 2011 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

wishlistOpen rates, are you rising?
Fewer folks, unsubscribing
A beautiful sight,
We’re happy tonight,
Walking in an email wonderland.

It’s that time of year again…the 5th annual collection of articles and reports that help you plan and implement a winning holiday email marketing strategy.

Christmas and Kwanzaa occupy their traditional dates on the calendar (no surprises there), while Hanukkah begins this year on December 20th.

The following resources are all new for 2011. Below them you’ll find collections from previous years, which are obviously still worth exploring. Got suggestions for other resources? Just use the comments.

Happy Holidays. And keep this bookmarked: I’ll be adding new resources as they come online.

  • Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season 2011: the big 51 page report from Chad White…full of information on what top retailers did last year, plus advice on how to approach timing, frequency and an array of seasonal email tactics.
  • Planning for the holidays: a long list of questions to ask when reviewing what you did last time…thus laying the foundation for this season’s campaigns.
  • Holidays ahead of time: advice for (small) business on what might go into holiday emails, with an emphasis on standing out from the typical “X%-off” promotions.
  • Holiday retail email ideas: tips, suggestions and warnings on how to ramp up your email marketing in time for Q4 and then make more use of the seasonal opportunity.
  • Top 10 steps: ideas for planning and preparing campaigns in advance of the holiday season.
  • Top 12 dates: list of key dates and events around which to plan appropriate holiday messaging.
  • A holiday marketing story: access a 10-page download outlining specific tactics and approaches to follow to get the most out of seasonal email campaigns.
  • Here come the holidays: suggests you get optimization and testing done before the holiday rush.
  • Holiday preparedness: 4 tips to help ensure seasonal success isn’t hampered by delivery issues.
  • Holiday season will be bigger: brief tips on the overall approach to take to Q4.
  • Retail email campaign planner: access a free and cute .pdf holiday campaign calendar off this (sales) page.
  • Holiday email trends: offers predictions on the tactics retailers will favor and/or should take a closer look at.
  • Holiday opt-ins: reviews all the places you should be promoting your email list to take advantage of increased interest in the holiday season.
  • Ten steps: another collection of tips and suggestions.
  • Everything holiday: a collection of resources for holiday email campaigns, such as clip art, templates, useful dates, downloadable guides, etc.
  • Prepare for the holiday season: an eclectic mix of tips on strategy, design, copy approaches, etc.
  • 7 holiday predictions: um…very detailed predictions of how holiday email marketing will pan out. Not just interesting in their own right, but also including optimization advice and tips.
  • 12 days of Christmas: 12-part series on how to best exploit Q4 with email, with accompanying tip sheet. The link takes you to Part 1.

Previous “Holiday email marketing” editions:

The first four editions:

In 2008, I also interviewed various retail email experts for their specific advice:

Top email marketing info sources: 2011 edition

Posted on 09. Sep, 2011 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

medalsNo man is an iland (no S), and I owe a constant debt of gratitude to those resources that keep me up-to-date with email marketing advice, wisdom and insight.

Each year, I publish a new list of my personal favorites – the people and places who’ve proved their value as an email marketing resource.

It’s a personal list, not an exhaustive one: there are many other wonderful resources out there, particularly for specialist niches. So please feel free to add to my suggestions through the comments.

Media sites

After a few years howling in the media wilderness, email has slipped past the bouncer and is back dancing with the cool kids in the marketing nightclub. Everyone is writing about it.

medalMediaPost’s Email Insider still ranks as a big favorite, largely because of the top notch columnists there, especially Loren McDonald. Loren’s also the top email personality to follow on G+

medalClickZ and me go back well over a decade. It was there I first read about the killer app (yep, email was once the hot new marketing thing). They have six solid columns now.

A special shout out goes to those by Derek Harding, Jeanne Jennings, Mike Hotz and the great Simms Jenkins.

Other media & membership sites I go back to regularly are:

The latter is worth joining to get access to the back catalog of case studies with real campaign numbers (some of which I even wrote, back when I used to freelance for them).

Finally, a special mention also for SmartInsights, which features email articles by digital marketing Überguru Dave Chaffey and Tim Watson, who always impresses me with his critical analysis and thinking. (Disclaimer: I write there, too).

Blogs, newsletters, etc.

Phew…the number of email marketing blogs and newsletters is somewhere in the four figures by now. Everyone has their personal favorites. Here are mine:

medalThe Retail Email Blog is the go-to place for keeping up with trends in, well, retail email marketing.

Author Chad White also produces regular reports and throws in his own wise insights with his coverage of the sector.

medalPay close attention to anything you see by Dela Quist and colleagues at Alchemy Worx (newsletter).

It’s hard to find the correct word to describe their insights, so I’ll put it like this: nobody has made me think harder about email and my own assumptions and ideas than Dela.

medalThe folk at Bronto have kept up a high standard of practical posts for a long time now. Also especially good for retailers to read.

The email design world is blessed with some excellent resources and I’ve already highlighted 22 sources for design inspiration elsewhere. But a quick extra mention for:

The deliverability world also has some fine blogs. My favorite is Word to the Wise by Laura and Steve Atkins. You’ll also get a lot of useful information and studies out of Return Path.

Good aggregators for those short of time are the Email Guide and the Email Institute. Special shoutouts also to:

  • WhatCounts (particularly articles by Christopher Penn, who comes at email from many different and innovative angles)
  • The DMA EMC blog (featuring a lot of top UK talent)
  • MailChimp (recently the blog has been more service oriented, but check out the article backlog and resource guides)

Statistics, studies and background data

I have separate posts covering sources of numbers and studies you might need for background or presentations. For example:

Community sites

medalI recently joined the Only Influencers member site and email marketing discussion list.

I’m largely a lurker, due to time issues, but have learnt an enormous amount through the willingness of some very clever people (vendors and marketers alike) to share their expertise, results and practical know-how with others.

It’s invitation-only, so contact Bill McCloskey (it’s his brainchild) to see if you would qualify for an invite.

Another public discussion community is the Email Marketers Club run by the delightful Tamara Gielen.

Twitter accounts

Recommending top Twitter accounts to follow is a hopeless task: there are so many good ones. I am annoyingly selective about who I follow, so most of those that I do are going to give you value for your time. Most of the resources mentioned in this post also have associated Twitter accounts.

Special shout outs to:

medalAndy Thorpe, Jordie van Rijn and Remy Bergsma: all master sharers of email links and insight. Also check the blogs associated with their accounts.

Some other names to watch for: top sharers and/or fountains of insight on Twitter and elsewhere:

Those getting started, particularly in small businesses

These are email marketing services whose blogs and other content is well suited to small business, often going well beyond email in the topics they address.

medalMichael Katz’s newsletter is the only one on this planet I find myself reading every issue, even if I don’t have the time to do so. How does he do that?

These ESPs are also well-tuned in to the needs of the smaller email sender:

Bonus people

These are not all email focused, but a few other folk I’ve found struck a chord with me in one fashion or another.

  • DJ Waldow, whose monumental enthusiasm and embracement of all things email and social is like having your own personal trainer.
  • J-P De Clerck, whose prodigious content output is equally inspiring. More importantly, he has very independent, ethical and forward-thinking views on marketing online.
  • Ken Magill, whose coverage of the industry reveals the incalculable value of style, personality and writing skills in creating reader loyalty.
  • Jim Ducharme, a top sharer and a writer on email/social media issues with a heart and mind in the right place.
  • Robin C Kennedy, the top commenter on this blog…many of his comments deserve their own post. Thanks Robin!
  • Kevin Hillstrom, whose blog has taught me more about analysis and measuring the true value of email than I even knew I needed to know.

Author’s note: A couple of the people or organizations mentioned above are also sponsors or clients. A couple are former sponsors or clients. Many I’ve had personal contact with. Many don’t even know I exist. None have bought me a beer.

One or two have sent me t-shirts (I’m a sucker for t-shirts) or chocolate (ditto). All are listed solely on merit and my (inevitably subjective, UK and US-biased) evaluation. Please do add your resource suggestions below!

5 lessons from a typical subject line test

Posted on 26. Aug, 2011 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

a lessonHaving no life to speak of, I’ve been thinking about subject lines.

Much of the advice I read is pretty absolute. Like:

“You dare not put everything in capitals.”

Or:

“Only Satanists use long subject lines.”

But there are few absolute truths in life, and even rules have exceptions.

Shouldn’t use all capitals? Probably not, but it works for Overstock and the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

Keep it short? Agree. Well, keep it as short as possible without sacrificing on potential impact. That’s not the same thing.

See, for example, the work by Alchemy Worx on how longer subject lines can benefit click rates. As Simms Jenkins notes:

“We have clients where short and to-the-point subject lines…and others where lengthy subject lines tease you into reading the email and acting”

Any doubt about what works best FOR YOU is quickly dispelled with a simple A/B test. After all, you can’t argue with numbers, can you?

Unfortunately, that’s not an absolute truth either.

Test data is not hard to obtain. The tricky bit is the interpretation. And that’s where a lot of us go wrong.

So in the grand tradition of frizzy-haired 19th century scientists, I’m going to experiment on myself to reveal some of the problems you need to avoid.

What happens if you remove subject line branding?

Here’s a test I did with this site’s email newsletter.

The first 164 issues of that newsletter used a subject line that begins:

(Email Marketing Reports)…

The theory is that consistent subject line branding means people recognize the email in their inbox. Recognition is good (except when it’s bad).

So what happens if we remove that subject line branding? Place your bets now…

Here the results of an August A/B test (note that everything else about the email stayed the same):

Subject line 1: What YOU see versus what your readers see + how to get email attention
Open rate: 22.9%

Subject line 2: (Email Marketing Reports) What YOU see versus what your readers see + how to get email attention
Open rate: 21.8%

Given the size of the test samples, the small difference in open rate was not significant.

This echoes stats from MailerMailer, who aggregated results from emails with branded subject lines and compared them with those from campaigns without subject line branding.

They didn’t find much difference either.

But wait…

Now let’s see where I messed up and dig out some issues with my rather typical subject line test.

Open rates?

Let’s begin with the obvious one.

The newsletter seeks to drive traffic back to the website. So “opens” is not actually a major goal, just a means to a click. Let’s look instead at click rates:

Branding: 13.3%

No branding: 16.6%

This difference is significant.

Removing the branding increased the number of clicks through to the articles at my site. I might also look at pageviews generated, unsubscribes, spam complaints and other metrics to get an overview of the true impacts.

Lesson 1: Make sure you judge the test based on what’s important

The trouble with using open rates as a judge is that subsequent metrics don’t always follow the same pattern. The winning subject line (based on clicks, sales etc.) does not always have the highest open rate.

It’s actually quite easy to write subject lines for high open rates. Segment by gender and send this to your male subscribers:

“Free beer as a thank you for subscribing”

You don’t want to do that?

Quite.

Open rates are rarely your goal. And, thing is, you have to offer the free beer.

You don’t want subject lines that lift interest and expectations, only to shatter them with the actual content. That trains people to distrust your future subject lines. Which is “not good”.

Your short-term open rate boost may not produce the same lift in actual responses. And it may hurt future responses, too.

That’s why “urgency” works best when used genuinely and intermittently. If every few days you send out a “30% off for two days only”, the value of that urgency is lost to anyone who has received more than a handful of those messages.

And that’s why subject line “tricks” need careful and intelligent application.

How many changes are you actually testing?

Here’s the next problem: was this test comparing a branded with a non-branded subject line?

No.

By removing the branding, the subject line also gets shorter.

So there are actually two changes at play here: branding and length. So what do we attribute the click benefits to?

Did the absence of branding get more people to take a second look to see what the email was about, rather than dismiss it as “another email from that marketing site”.

Or did the shorter subject line mean the actual information on the email’s contents was seen by more people?

Or was it a combination of both?

Lesson 2: For future insight, ensure you understand how the subject lines you test actually differ, so you can attribute differences to specific characteristics

The ideal subject line test tells you something you can apply in the future. But many tests look like this:

“30% off new summer fashions” vs “SUMMER SALE 2 Days Only!”

The results reveal a winning subject line for a particular campaign, which is a legitimate and useful outcome. But they give little insight on what it was that made that subject line better.

If subject 2 wins, was it the capitalization, length, urgency, etc. that made the difference?

Without such insights, you have few lessons to apply to future emails.

Net changes disguise negative impacts

And there’s another big danger when more than one thing changes…

Suppose the removal of branding actually hurts results, but the shorter subject line more than compensates for it?

If I then conclude that non-branded subject lines work better, I’m missing out on an important insight: that branding actually helps. Perhaps the best subject is something like this:

(EMR) What YOU see versus what your readers see + how to get email attention

Now let’s make it even more complicated.

Different people may be responding in different ways:

  • The presence of a branded subject line may boost results for some who like my emails: they recognize the email and open it
  • It may hurt short-term results for some who like my emails: they recognize it and file it for later review (better long-term results)
  • It may hurt results for some who are ambivalent about my emails: they recognize it and know there’s no special reason to open it
  • It may have no effect on readers using a smartphone, who might focus much more on the from line anyway
Lesson 3: Try testing on different subscriber segments

Removing branding will see response move in different directions, depending on the recipient. We only see the net effect.

My recent thoughts on reactivation campaigns reflect the fact that subject line elements may have different impacts, depending on the recipient segment.

Novelty versus real effects

If my kids get green pasta, they will show more interest in the meal.

Is it because green pasta is inherently more interesting than any other color pasta? Or is it because it’s different to the yellow pasta they normally get?

Or both?

When you deviate from a regular pattern or approach in your subject line, there are two elements driving response changes.

The first is the impact of change itself: the novelty value.

The second is the fundamental impact of the change: what we might call the true impact.

Both can wear off or change with time, especially the first.

Lesson 4: Be aware of the novelty factor when evaluating results and use it to your advantage

The novelty factor in email marketing means changes like removing the branding or all capitals need reevaluation in a later test to see if the results still hold. Are the results repeatable?

Tests need repeating at intervals anyway – especially if your audience, content, goals etc. have changed and you need to revisit assumptions about what works best.

And, of course, the short-term attention boost that novelty value can sometimes get you is a legitimate tactic in its own right.

Chad White, for example, talks about “wake-up slap” tactics in email design, where deviation from the usual grabs attention. A similar concept might apply to subject lines.

The wider environment

Subject lines don’t work in isolation. They are commonly viewed along with a from line and (often) snippet text, preheader text and/or a preview pane.

So the results of any subject line tests also depend on that context.

I removed the branding from the subject. But…the from line is “Email Marketing Reports” and the preview pane features the site logo and the words ‘”The Email Marketing Reports newsletter”.

So the overall reduction in “branding” and “recognition” is considerably less than if the from line and preview pane didn’t also feature branding.

In the latter scenario, removing the branding might have hurt responses or lifted spam complaints as people had no clue who the email was from.

Lesson 5: Test results may not be transferable between different email situations

OK, let’s stop there as you simply must not write more than 500-700 words in an online article if you want a response (another one of those absolute truths).

Love to hear any of your views on how to better do and interpret subject line tests…comment below or on Google+

Pavlov meets email: have you trained subscribers to ignore you?

Posted on 16. Aug, 2011 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

a dogA lot of email marketing “best practices” aim to get subscribers to salivate when you ring the bell.

The bell, in this case, is made up of those recognition elements that tell the casual inbox browser that this email is from YOU.

They alert the reader to the promised treasures within your message.

So we use a consistent, recognizable sender name.

We feature brand names in subject lines.

We put our logo up top left, so it stands out in preview panes.

We use brand colors and work with a common design template. We paste up samples on our sign-up pages. Etc. etc.

Recognition leads to attention to interest to response.

Yay!

I’m all for this, but it does make one huge assumption: that people are interested in what you deliver.

The bad news is, many are not (check your response rates for proof).

When conditioning goes wrong

Here’s a disturbing theory…

For those who are no longer terribly interested in your messages, the ringing bell has the opposite of the desired effect: it tells them they can safely ignore your message. You have trained them not to pay immediate attention.

All the effort you put into conditioning readers to recognize your communications backfires when they’ve decided your emails are not worth their time.

But why should you care?

If they don’t like your emails anyway, it surely doesn’t matter if they ignore them?

Well, conditioning becomes very important when trying to win back or reactivate subscribers. Conditioning means most of these well-intentioned efforts are doomed to failure.

The problem with reactivation campaigns

Here are three scenarios where you want to reach those unenthusiastic recipients:

1. You’ve identified genuinely inactive subscribers: they don’t open or click and you’re pretty sure the steady stream of emails from you is not causing them to respond elsewhere either.

You’ve also identified why they might have gone inactive and taken action to ensure future emails would keep them in the fold.

2. Your emails never got too much organizational love, but now you’ve revamped your content and offers.

3. You had a few lazy weeks/months when you coasted a little and let standards slip. But now the email specialist is back from sick leave and you can return to your usual high standard.

We want to give those unenthusiasts a reason to take a new look at your emails: a “reactivation campaign”. Not a new concept by any means.

Most advice on such reactivation efforts focuses on sending a standout offer or a clever subject line. If our theory is correct, they shouldn’t work very well.

Why?

Because the emails carrying this offer or subject line still ring the bell that tells people “here comes another one of those emails we get little value from”.

So, do typical reactivation campaigns work?

Here’s what noted email expert Loren McDonald says:

Many marketers tell me their reactivation programs bring only 1% to 2% of their inactives back from the dead. Some are more successful, others less so. (My query on Twitter generated responses of 0.91%, 1.82% and 3.2% reactivation rates.)

One lesson, suggests Loren, is that we should work harder to stop people going inactive in the first place.

But what can we do when it’s too late? As I’ve asked elsewhere:

You’ve trained people not to pay attention, so how do you prove that you deserve that attention with your special reactivation offer or improved email program?

Untraining the trained

If recognition and familiarity actually work against us, should we then try the opposite of what we normally do?

Should we try some of the things we’d never (or rarely) consider doing if we were mailing active subscribers?

And that’s the point. If we’re mailing people who are not responding to normal emails, then:

1. There is little risk from trying something markedly different: the worst that can happen is they continue not to respond.

2. If “best practice” (like a branded subject line) is supporting the habits these inactive readers have formed with your emails, then they are hurting your results, not helping. They are best practice for active subscribers, but not necessarily for inactive ones.

So what counts as doing things differently?

Well, this is still all theory, but what do you think of one or more of these:

  • Send a plain text email or drop your logo down out of the preview pane
  • Change frequency dramatically, reducing it considerably or increasing it considerably
  • Change the friendly from name
  • Take branding out of the subject line
  • Scrap your usual template and go for a single big image
  • Send your email(s) at a different time of day/week/month

If you reaction to any of these is “but doing this is not a best practice so won’t work as well”, remember that you are not mailing active subscribers. It cannot actually work any worse.

For example, altering your friendly from line is generally considered a bad practice.

Here’s what I said just last month:

The from line should normally be the name most familiar to the recipient.

So my newsletter, for example, comes from “Email Marketing Reports”.

After all, a lot of people have real or mental filters in place to sort email by sender, and you’re going to break those filters.

But that’s a feature, not a bug, when it comes to inactive subscribers, no?

These people might be using the from name to identify the email they’ve decided isn’t worth their time. Might a from line that is new get at least some people to give the email a second look?

Now there are four provisos I’d throw in with this theory:

1. Different practices does not mean bad practices. Plain text email is not per se a bad practice. Using a deceptive from and subject line is. We shouldn’t do anything plain silly, unethical or illegal (obviously).

2. It’s a second look you’re going for, so people are alerted to the (new) value of your emails. But you cannot abandon recognition elements entirely.

People still need to know it’s from you so they can look out for your future, normal emails. And if they don’t know it’s from you, you run the risk of spam complaints from people who think you mailed them without their permission.

3. This is all largely theory. I’ve only tested the idea of removing subject line branding (I’ll reveal the results in another post). I wouldn’t try any of the suggestions without running a test first.

4. Any success you have reactivating subscribers is largely a waste of time if you haven’t addressed the reason they went inactive. Otherwise they’ll simply go inactive again.

So, what do you think? Does this counterintuitive approach make sense?

Have you tried any of these reactivation techniques yourself? Let me know in the comments…

See mobile inboxes and emails on real devices

Posted on 02. Aug, 2011 by in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing

Confession time: I only own one mobile phone and one laptop. And neither is made by Apple.

I believe this makes me uncool at best and “old and uncool” at worst (or so my kids tell me).

With all the talk about mobile email, how nice it would be to see how emails look on the various devices and systems out there.

Step forward design preview tools, like those offered by Litmus, EmailReach, Return Path and others.

But how about looking over someone’s shoulder as they fiddle with a mobile inbox?

Step forward YouTube.

Video reviews of new phones and tablets often contain detailed coverage of the device’s email application. So if you want to see email on an iPad 2 or a BlackBerry Bold or an HTC Sensation, videos are a slightly cheaper alternative to the real thing.

Here are videos for some of the newer mobile devices. They bring home some key lessons across mobile email, like:

  • Just how important will the from line become? Sometimes that’s often the only thing that really stands out in the inbox
  • Look at how big those fingers appear. Are your links large enough and discrete enough to allow easy touchscreen clicking? Can people scroll, pinch etc. without inadvertently triggering a click?
  • Inbox previews: watch the HTC Sensation video. What text will show up there for your emails?

What lessons do you take away?

iPad 2

Blackberry PlayBook

iPhone 4

BlackBerry Bold 9900

Samsung Droid Charge

HTC Sensation

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