MarketingSherpa recently evaluated a year’s worth of email newsletter subject lines to identify those that achieved the best open and click through rates.

Be sure to join MarketingSherpa to review the details of their findings. They point to four big take-aways from their study, but I gleaned eight (8) powerful tips:

1. Show value in the first two words. These first two words should ideally convey actionable value.

2. Use the right ‘trigger’ words. We’ve discussed trigger words before. These are the words that immediately attract the attention of your target audience. MarketingSherpa also points out that while having a punchy subject line is ideal… including the right (trigger) words in the subject line is MORE important.

3. Ideally, have a subject-line length of between 31 and 41 characters (including spaces). All things being equal, shorter subject lines work better than longer ones.

4. Avoid ‘hard sell’ subject lines or subject lines that are too self-promotional.

5. Use subject lines that convey value… but don’t ask readers to do anything.

6. Avoid subject lines that are vague or use ‘corporate speak’.

7. Mention ‘hot’ brands i.e. brands that are popular or controversial among your target audience. MarketingSherpa found that mentioning Facebook and Google, for example, ignited the interest of its readers.

8. Spend a few hours on getting the subject line right. A few hours? Yes, that’s what MarketingSherpa recommends. And it makes sense when you consider that using the right subject line could mean the difference between thousands, or even hundreds, of people reading your emails… or not.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “4 Takeaways from MarketingSherpa’s Newsletter Subject-Line Analysis”, MarketingSherpa, November 25, 2008

Some sobering news from eMarketer: fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing emails, according to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer.

MailerMailer found that the average marketing email open rate was just 13.20 percent in the first half of 2008, compared with 16.11 percent in the first half of 2007. Click through rates also decreased - from 3.18 percent in the first half of 2007 to 2.73 percent in the first half of 2008.

MailerMailer found that some industries had higher open rates – namely banking/finance, religious/spiritual, government and telecommunications.

It also found that shorter subject lines performed better than longer ones. Subject lines of less than 35 characters had an average open rate of 19.6 percent and a 3.1 percent average click-through rate. Meanwhile, emails with subject lines of 35 or more characters had an average open rate of 14.8 percent and an average click rate of just 1.9 percent.

As we’ve discussed before, lower open and click-through rates are to be expected as more people use email clients that require them to actively download images. Since an ‘open’ is only recorded when a small image is downloaded, a lower open rate is almost inevitable. Also, the study focused on email subscribers in general… NOT on customers, which would be expected to generate higher open and clickthrough rates alike.

Having said that, it is likely that with more email hitting people’s inboxes than ever, fewer people will actually open and click on their emails.

In any case, it’s DEFINITELY worth monitoring the trends in YOUR open rates and clickthrough rates, and aiming to continually improve responsiveness by testing subject lines, content, offers, email frequency, and other variables. Watch for sharp spikes or drops which may indicate content and/or offers that do or don’t resonate with people… or may even indicate deliverability issues.

Source: eMarketer, “Consumers Opening Fewer Emails”, eMarketer, November 14, 2008

My mother sent me one of those email hoaxes today. You know the one that’s supposedly from Johns Hopkins University and warns against putting plastic containers in microwave ovens and freezers?

I thought I’d seen it before… and vaguely thought it might have been a hoax… but the emotive language and severe warnings managed to disturb me somewhat. What if it was true? Had all that microwaving and freezing in supposedly microwave and freezer safe plastic containers put my family and I at risk?

Fortunately, I wasn’t going to take the word of an email that had obviously been forwarded to me from my mum, who had received it from her friend, who had received it from her friend, and so on. I was going to check it out for myself. So I went onto the official Johns Hopkins website and guess what I found?

An article entitled “Email Hoax Regarding Freezing Water Bottles and Microwave Cooking” at http://www.jhsph.edu/dioxins

But it seems my action - verifying the supposed source of the email - is something most people don’t do. Presumably, that’s a key reason why we keep seeing all these email hoaxes: most people just forward them along rather than checking to see if they have any merit or truth.

Actually, let’s explore why email hoaxes are so effective in terms of viral marketing. Maybe we can learn something we can apply to LEGITIMATE email marketing:

1. They’re sent by people we know, like and trust, so we tend to open them. In this case, it was my mum. (Actually, I don’t always open my mum’s emails as she tends to forward email hoaxes and silly jokes… oh, the irony!)

2. They use emotive subject lines that appeal to most people. In this case the subject line was ‘Cancer update from Johns Hopkins’. In a society gripped by fear of the big ‘C’, that’s an email many of us are likely to open.

3. The email copy is also emotive. It taps into a fear many of us have, given our lack of understanding of the various technologies around us, our fear of cancer (nearly all of us have been personally touched by its horrors), our concern for how we live our lives, and all sorts of other fears.

4. The email copy is seemingly authoritative and trustworthy. As well as mentioning the respected U.S. hospital and medical institution Johns Hopkins, the email also mentions the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Dr Edward Fujimoto as supporting the content of the email. Notice how by dropping these big names the email piggy-backs on them to convey proof? In this case, it’s a lie… but there are perfectly acceptable ways to do this.

5. There is no apparent sales pitch, reinforcing the supposed legitimacy of the email. Although the call to action is obvious: to forward the email to others.

Now, go through that list of 1-5 again… has it sparked any ideas about how to boost response rates to YOUR emails? Just promise me one thing: you won’t send out a lie or hoax…

Mahalo - the ‘human powered search engine’ founded by Jason Calacanis - has launched a new ‘liveblog’ system that delivers one line summaries of breaking world news.

Visit the site (http://www.mahalo.com) and on the right-hand side you’ll see a list of subject lines listed in highlighted categories (e.g. Showbiz, Politics, etc) such as ‘PolitiFact.com challenges McCain’s Ayers ad’ with a link to the external site hosting the relevant story.

According to TechCrunch, Mahalo employs 100 full-time editors to work on Mahalo’s 100,000+ guide pages; it has employed just 4-8 full time staff working around the clock on the liveblog. In a fun twist, the company also has a liveblog section where you can watch Mahalo’s livebloggers in action and even ask them questions as they work.

Mahalo plans to have a Ustream feed for each liveblog news category, and may also allow others to syndicate the liveblog news stories in the future.

Source: Mark Hendrickson, “Mahalo Sets Out To Liveblog The World”, TechCrunch, October 10, 2008

Based on its report on Australian email marketing metrics, here are three (3) tips from email service provider Vision 6 to help you improve the success of your email campaigns:

1. Clean, segment and continually profile your list to maximize email delivery, opens and click-throughs.
2. Ensure relevancy and sender recognition - ensure emails, subject lines, content and calls to action are relevant to recipients and clearly convey who is sending the emails.
3. Target and segment lists - target, profile and modify email campaigns. It’s better to send more targeted messages to different segments, than to send one general message to your entire database.

Source: Vision 6, “Email Marketing Metrics Report Australia Jan-Jun 2008″

Can you believe it? I’m writing about that beach bum Frank Kern again.

A few days ago Frank released a video mentioning the effectiveness of using negative email subject lines. In the video he went through a few examples of emails where using “bad news” and similar subject lines achieved substantially higher email open rates than his more “friendly” or “matter of fact” subject lines. Like DOUBLE the open rates of such other subject lines.

Lo and behold, almost as soon as Frank’s video became public, I - and perhaps you too - got all these emails with “bad news” in the subject line.

Don’t these people get it? Using “bad news” in your subject line may well cause your email open rate to increase (I literally used it myself just a few months ago)… but not if everyone is using it at the same time!

Marketing - and especially email marketing - isn’t done in a vacuum. Quite the contrary - the effectiveness of your marketing is not just a function of what YOU do… it’s also a function of what EVERYONE ELSE (who are all competing for your prospects’ attention) DOES OR DOESN’T DO.

And if you DID receive a stack of “bad news” emails in the last day or so, let me ask you… how impactful was the last email you got with “bad news” in the subject line?

Still not convinced that sending out a barrage of “bad news” emails is not a good idea? Okay, well I have 74 emails from Frank Kern in my email folder, collected in a period of a little over a year. How many times do you think Frank used the subject line “bad news”?

He used it an incredible… ONE time!

So if Frank really believes that using “bad news” is bound to double his “normal” open rate every time… why don’t ALL his emails have “bad news” in the subject line?

I’ll let Frank answer. This is what he said in a Warrior Forum discussion thread on the topic:

“Doh! I didn’t mean for everyone to start using the subject line “BAD NEWS” all the time. There has to be context and finesse with this technique… The intended message was that if people just work on optimizing their open rates, they can realistically double their business (assuming all other numbers remain constant)… It wasn’t meant to be about the subject line.”

That - and the fact that negative subject lines CAN work exceptionally well (in context and with finesse!) - should be the major take-out from Frank’s video… not that you should necessarily stick “bad news” in the subject line of your next email broadcast.

And yes, I have used “bad news” in MY subject line… I’m curious to see the impact (if any) on my open rate…

Sources: Frank Kern, “Bad News” Video, Warrior Forum, “Bad News”, August 12, 2008