I’m excited to be leading a session titled ‘Winning Email Marketing Strategies: Improving Opens, Clicks, Conversions and Return-on-Investment’ at ClickZ Live Chicago on Thursday, November 6, 2014. This blog post provides a sneak peak of two of the subject line tips and trends we’ll be covering in this session – visit the ClickZ Live Chicago Website to read the full session description and register.

One more note: I’ll also be leading a half–day pre-conference workshop titled  ‘Beyond Basics: Advanced Strategies and Tactics to Boost the Performance of Your Email Marketing Program’ on Monday, November 3, 2014 – I provide a taste of the advanced email marketing analytics section of that workshop in my 27-Oct-2014 ClickZ column. Hope to see you there!

Subject lines – they are one of the most critical parts of any email marketing  message you send. Subject lines can stop recipients in their tracks and get them to read your email right now — or they be yawn-inducing and drive people to scroll past your message without even thinking about opening it.

There’s actually been some interesting things going on around subject lines in the last few years; here are two trends worth following, along with tips for testing them with your own program.

Special Characters

Special characters in subject lines aren’t new; I feel like, for a while there, almost every subject line had a special character or three in it (well, maybe not every one, but a lot!).

In the most recent analysis I’ve seen, less than 6% of emails sent included special characters in the subject line (see the chart below from Email Marketing Trends for February 2014, Jim Davidson for the Bronto Blog, March 11, 2014).

As I looked through my various inboxes, in a completely unscientific study, I found only one subject line with a special character in it; it was from Foot Locker:

And while I love the little email image, I have to say that I don’t think it was closely enough tied with the subject line or the message itself — although the message did have to do with my Foot Locker email subscription. Did they test subject lines with and without the special character? And, if so, did the special character boost response rate? Would love to know.

Full disclosure: I did open, read and click on this email – I added my US Postal Service address to my profile because of it. So it worked at least at some level.

There’s anecdotal evidence showing a boost in open rates when special characters are used, but I’ve yet to prove a boost in bottom line performance (read: revenue or conversions). Even so, they are worth testing. The best ‘how-to’ resource I’ve seen is Symbols in Subject Lines, published by Experian back in 2012.

Personalization

While it’s not new, personalization of subject lines is another tactic worth testing. In their 2014 Email Metrics Report, MailerMailer found that personalized subject lines depressed open rate (see below).

But when they looked at click-through rate, personalizing both the subject line and the body of the message was the key to optimization (see below).

I helped a client test personalization earlier this year — our key performance indicator was revenue generated. We found that personalizing both the subject line and the message with the recipient’s first name boosted revenue-per-email by 160% over the control, which had no personalization.

Give these subject lines trends a try and let me know how it goes. For more ideas to boost bottom line performance join me in Chicago next month!

Note from Jeanne: Happy Throwback Thursday! I wrote this article in February 2014 and it was first published by ClickZ. A year later personalization remains an underutilized tactic in email and other marketing — and a percentage of those who are doing personalization aren’t doing it as well as they could. Here are four tips to make the most of personalization.

There’s a line between constructive and creepy, but when done correctly, email personalization can boost the performance of your email marketing campaigns.

I wrote a blog post recently for Only Influencers on email personalization that was creepy. But done correctly, personalization can boost the performance of your email marketing campaigns.

eMarketer recently reported on a Harris Interactive survey done in December 2013 that asked U.S. digital shoppers about email personalization. The results were great news for e-commerce marketers using email:

• 81 percent said that receiving personalized emails based on their own preferences and shopping behaviors would make them at least somewhat more likely to make additional purchases.
• 82 percent would be at least somewhat willing to receive more emails from stores that personalized the mailings based on their shopping habits.
• 69 percent said they would be willing to share personal information about themselves if companies would use that information to send email messages that were more relevant to them.

Here are some tips for good and not-so-good ways to gather information to personalize your email messages; done correctly the payoff will be a better subscriber experience and a boost to your bottom line revenue!

1. Do Ask

Gathering personal information at the point of opt-in can be tricky. The more you ask, the more likely it is that people will either lie or leave without completing the sign-up process. But it can be done.

As a rule of thumb, ask for no more than five fields of information on your sign-up page. If you must ask for more, break it up into multiple pages, with the most important information first, and be sure the answers are written to your database as each page is filled out — not just at the end of the process when all pages are complete.

Tell people why you are asking these questions, in benefit-oriented terms, and they’ll be more likely to answer. For example, I’m more likely to share the fact that I’m 5-feet 9-inches tall if it’s clear that this will get me more emails about pants that come with longer inseams and eliminate emails about petite dresses.

2. Do Ask Again

Gathering information for personalization shouldn’t stop after the opt-in.

Set up a preference and personalization center that subscribers can access anytime they receive an email or visit your site. As they get more comfortable with your brand and more familiar with your email program, they will likely be willing to share more personal information with you.

Show them the information you’ve already gathered on them — then let them update it. Also show them the information you’d like to have but don’t know yet — and ask them to provide it. Don’t forget to make a benefit-oriented case; let them know what they’ll receive in return for providing the information.

3. Do Observe

Observed data can be even more valuable than reported data — but here’s a place where you have to be cautious. There’s a line between constructive and creepy and it’s important not to cross it.

One element of this is how you present the information. Seeing that a customer looked at a dozen bathing suits on your site yesterday but didn’t buy any and sending an email with a selection of bathing suits in it isn’t creepy. But including a message in the email that says, “We saw that you were looking at bathing suits on the site yesterday but didn’t put any in your cart…” is. This is true even if they have opted-in to receive email from you and are a regular visitor to your site.

4. Don’t Forget Permission

Continuing my previous thought: If I haven’t opted-in to receive email from you and you’re sending me messages based on observed behavior…then you’re definitely in the creepy zone, even if you don’t include the message about knowing what I did on your site yesterday.

Yes, I know that there’s a big business in doing appends to get the email addresses of IP addresses that have visited your site. But it’s creepy. If I wanted to receive email from you, I would have opted-in when I visited your site. If I didn’t opt-in, then I don’t want to receive email from you. End of story. Growing your list in this manner isn’t email marketing — it’s email stalking.

If you’re looking to boost the performance of your e-commerce email marketing program, personalization can be the key to your success. It’s all about relevance — figure out what information will help you be more relevant to your audience and then either ask them to provide it or watch to see if you can observe it. Do try this at your office and let me know how it goes!

Until next time,

Jeanne

Note from Jeanne: Happy Throwback Thursday! I continue to work with clients to make their marketing more personalized — without crossing into the creepy zone. A discussion I had last week in a meeting reminded me of this article from June of last year (it was originally published as part of my ClickZ Email Marketing Column) — read on for some tips on using personalization in a way that won’t upset your customers.  

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Specialized Information Publishers Association’s (SIPA, a division of SIIA) Annual Conference. My presentation focused on data, technology and testing in digital marketing and a particularly interesting discussion arose around browse reminders.

Were they good marketing tools or creepy?

The trigger was this browse reminder email, which I received from Hanes.com:

I was using this as an example of customization – the product featured is one I had looked at but had not put in my cart. I had looked at a few items but had left without putting anything in my cart.

One attendee raised her hand and said she was creeped out by this. The idea that Hanes knew what I looked at on their Website, even though I didn’t put anything in my cart – she understood that. She knew how cookies and click-stream tracking worked. But the idea that they would use that information to email me – that was unsettling to her. She said it reminded her of when she looked at a pair of shoes online – and then those shoes stalked her around the Internet, showing up in ads at every other site she visited.

On the one hand, understandable. It’s a new phenomenon to have possessions we considered purchasing follow us around. On the other hand, understandable; in the industry it’s called remarketing. And it’s something more and more retailers are doing to drive sales. They’re doing it because it’s profitable.

So how do we balance the need to drive sales with the need not to appear ‘creepy’ to at least some of our customers?

I recall a time, years ago, that I got an email from someone touting a new technology that might be useful to my clients. He said he could track in real time a person’s movements around my clients’ websites. I was intrigued and clicked through to his website to learn more.

I was about three pages into my exploration when the phone rang. I answered. The sender of the email introduced himself and then asked what I thought about the three pages – he could reference their content specifically – of their website that I had viewed.

Just like the person in my session today, I was creeped out. I ended the conversation as quickly as possible and never did recommend this technology to my clients.

But perhaps that gentleman was just ahead of his time. And perhaps my cringing was a sign of being unwilling to overcome my discomfort and embrace the future. Consumer perceptions of privacy are changing. Things that used to be technologically difficult, if not impossible, are now common place.

Think about cart abandonment. If you’re shopping in a brick-and-mortar store and you decide to leave and abandon your cart, no one comes after you. Chances are no one knows it was you. But if you do that online today ecommerce marketers would be remiss if they didn’t sent you at least one cart abandonment email. And the most sophisticated companies will send you multiple reminders, including images of the items in your card, to entice you to come back and purchase. They might even offer you a discount.

And most consumers would not be put off by this. Many online retailers are more concerned with consumers gaming the system to get the discount than they are with people being creeped out.

So where do we, as marketers, draw the line?

Do we use all the technology available to us to drive a sale – or do we hold back to avoid creeping out potential customers? It’s a fine balance.

My set presentation took a back seat as we hashed out this issue. In this end this is where we landed:

• Sending cart abandonment emails was okay, as the action of putting something in your cart created the expectation that the retailer would know about it.
• Sending browse reminder emails referencing that you had visited the site without putting something in your cart was over the line – whether or not they included an image of what you had viewed.
• But sending a general email which did not reference the fact that you had visited the site but that did include an image of something you had viewed on the site was deemed acceptable.

Bottom line: every marketer needs to determine what is best for their own organization – and for their own customers. This is a business decision. What is the cost of the ‘creepiness’ factor? Does it outweigh the additional revenue generated, both in the short and the long term?

Adding another level of complexity: consumer sentiment on ‘creepiness’ is evolving. As more companies adopt abandon cart and browse remarketing it becomes more prevalent. And as it becomes more prevalent it becomes more expected, more accepted and less creepy.

Where is your audience on the spectrum? Once you find out, you can work out how transparent you can be about targeting them based on observed behaviors without becoming ‘creepy.’