You’ve done your analysis, but what if you’ve noticed that your open and click rates are declining, and you want to give them a boost? How can you get these metrics to increase?
Work on Your Top Three: Sender, Subject Line, Preheader
Before ever opening an email, the first thing you see in your inbox is a list of emails received. Your inbox displays the sender, the subject line, and the preheader. These are the top three elements that determine whether or not you open an email. It is crucial to use these three levers to maximize opens:
Sender name: This should be recognizable and stable. There doesn’t tend to be much room for creativity at this level – your subscribers open emails from trusted senders. In general, the sender’s name should be your company’s name and should not vary from one campaign to the next. Changing the sender name in every campaign is a practice used by spammers.
Subject line: This should be short, as short subjects are easy to remember. Watch out, though – if it’s too short, it will be devoid of any meaning. An ideal subject line will be fewer than 10 words and 50 characters. It should capture your reader’s attention, and the most important words should be at the start. If your target allows, feel free to go for something a bit quirky and punchy. Maybe a play on words?
For example, for a company that sells alarms, the subject line: “Break-ins on the rise: protect your home” will work better than: “Fit your home with an alarm.”
Just before Mother’s Day, a company that sells magazine subscriptions could write: “For you, mom, with all my love.” It works better than: “On Mother’s Day: Give her a magazine.”
The preheader: This is the sentence that appears just below the subject line. It should provide information that supports the subject.
Going back to house alarms, you could write: “2/3 of all homes in your area are protected – is yours?”
Do not repeat the sender’s name in the subject line or preheader. It’s pointless and a waste of space. Things that do work well are figures (e.g., Four reasons why…), thought-provoking questions (What to do with your terrible gifts?), and things that will interest and surprise your readers!
Run A/B Tests
One of the many advantages of email is the ability to run a test with each mail-out. Testing means you can optimize your clicks and, in turn, your conversions.
So what is A/B testing?
A/B testing tests two versions of an email sent randomly to a small sample of your target group. The version that performs best will then be sent to the rest of the target.
Two versions: actually, you can and should test everything – the subject line, preheader, sender name, positioning of a button, call-to-action wording, button color, images, design, features, promotions, price display, component placement, send time, etc.
To a sample of your target group: as a general rule, utilize 10% of your contact base. Make sure that you have at least 1000 contacts in each segment, as it’s a fairly representative number.
Then: it’s a good idea to leave 24 hours, or at least one 12-hour working day (so if you send an A/B test at 8 a.m., you would ideally send the winning version the following day at 8 a.m. or, at 8 p.m. that evening if in a hurry). The goal is to give your contacts time to open and click on the email and get representative results before casting your net any wider.
That performs best: open rate, click rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, etc. This often gives rise to a bit of debate! Focus on the metric that matters most to the business!
Revise Your Segmentation
Segmentation (the main lever for maximizing performance) could initially be quite basic: prospective clients, existing clients, or former clients. You could then refine it depending on your client value: occasional, regular, or VIP. For the very best results, though, your segmentation should target your subscribers’ interests. There are different ways to find out what your readers are interested in: asking them (through a data-gathering questionnaire), their previous orders, the pages they’ve looked at on your website, or opens and clicks within your newsletters.
Draw Up a Program
Adopt a strategic approach.
Create a testing program and include testing in your mail-out schedule. For each test, set a goal, a method, and the metrics you want to monitor.
Month 1: Testing different subject lines (quirky vs. factual, informal vs. formal, promotion vs. question, etc.)
Month 2: Preheader testing
Month 3: Email tagline testing
Month 4: CTA test (color, location, text, shape)
Month 5: Optimum delivery day
Month 6: Optimum time of day for delivery
Month 7: Target A vs. target B
Month 8: Promotional vs. relational content
Next, input your results into your analysis table. Finally, create a guide of lessons learned.
Let’s Recap!
To maximize opens and clicks – and to reduce unsubscribes and dissatisfaction – you need to:
Work on your top 3 - subject lines, preheaders and sender- to capture your readers’ interest. Dare to be different!
Target according to your contacts’ interests to improve the open rate of the email.
Use A/B testing to give you a better understanding of how your public reacts to your ideas.
Draw up a testing program to ensure that you are getting feedback from clients on various aspects of the email. Remember to test one element at a time over a period of time!
In the next part of this course, we’ll tackle another crucial yet complex issue: deliverability.
