Email
Research by Hamilton House reported on its various news groups showed that response rates are affected by
- The way the text was written - with a change of style being able to double response rates. More below
- Whether the recipient has opted in to the information supplied by this particular sender. More below.
- The subject line - with a serious statement being much better than any sort of "free offer" or "don't miss out" message. More below
Research carried out by Ben Chestnut, Partner at RocketScienceGroup, and reported on the Marketing Sherpa news group analyzed those email messages that were most opened and those that were least opened.
Almost all the ones that were most opened had the company name in the subject line - often followed by words like News Bulletin, or Update or Newsletter.
The ones that people did not open had lines like "Last minute gift". Where a company name was mentioned it was followed not by "newsletter" but by a boast or claim - such as "Pioneer in Computing Technology".
What seems to come from this is that emails which are about news or information appear to readers to be more worthy of opening than those that are obviously advertisements. The survey is American, and it might be different here - but I suspect similar answers will be found.
Research by Hamilton House has shown that the inclusion of pictures and logos of any time seriously reduces the chance of making a sale through an email. Emails which describe the product in a straightforward way, stressing the benefits, but not going into hype, and then have a link to a website, do much better than those which try to illustrate the product in the picture.
1: Being relevant to the recipient
Consider three possible selections you could make when choosing a list of businesses to email. You could select, "All companies with between 20 and 50 staff" or you could select "All accountancy firms" or finally, "all accountancy firms with over 20 staff".
The point about these selections is that they become more specific as they go along and what we find is that the more specific the selection, the more specific you can make your sales pitch in the email - and the more successful it is likely to become.
Quite obviously, most companies with 20 to 50 staff may have nothing in common with each other - one might make the coating that goes onto CDs, while another could run a fishing fleet. However once we get to the next group there clearly is a link, and in the final group there is a stronger link - so you can make your email pitch much more specific. You can talk about the issues facing small firms of accountants in a way that you cannot do when you don't even know what each company does.
So the first factor that increases sales in email marketing is the way the text is written. If it appears to be well targeted and relevant there is every chance that the recipient will differentiate this email from the millions of spam items that are sent out to every email address that can be found, irrespective of whose address it is.
2: Giving the recipient a choice
In a recent study by DoubleClick, email users said they were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified.
That number points out the absolute importance of making recipients feel that they are choosing their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive.
Combining factors one and two, Hamilton House wrote to heads and deputy heads in schools and offered them the chance to subscribe to Education Management News - a regular email service. It was made clear that there were two options were available - one for primary teachers and one for secondary. By giving teachers this choice, and addressing them as managers of schools in the UK and writing about issues that are relevant to them, HHM increased the response rates significantly when offering them the chance to subscribe.
3. Encouraging opening of the email
Several studies have shown that the most compelling reason for people to open a business email is the name in the “from” field while other studies have suggested that the “subject” line is also vital.
The best "from" field names seem to be those that relate to the recipient. Thus in the example above the emails were sent from Education Management News - which immediately "spoke" to the teachers who received the emails.
For the "subject" line the words "newsletter" and "update" had a very high uptake - and "free" could be helpful where it related to something that the recepient would believe could be free and was of interest. |