What letters open more often?

Habré had a lot of posts on the layout of email-mailing, and relatively few - on the topic of email-copywriting, so we decided to fill the gap. Below - 10 nuances on which it depends, whether your letter will open, and also a way to statistically compare the effectiveness of different headers.

10 nuances of writing the title

Meaningfulness. . The reader must understand what the letter is about. Otherwise, all other tricks will not make sense. When you get loyal subscribers for whom you have credibility by themselves - you can flirt with the reader as much as you like (see below). While there is no certainty, the recipient will not open the letter in order to understand what it is about - he must understand it by the title. Take this as an axiom, despite the fact that it is only partly true.

Descriptive . Paradoxically, not selling headlines, but descriptive wins. Mailchimp conducted a study, according to which more often they open letters with headers such as “Newsletter from Company X”, and less often with headers like “Goods X with a 20% discount”. A good headline does not try to sell anything, otherwise the letter can be ignored even before the opening. The more varied the content of each individual letter, the more descriptive the title should be. For example, headlines like “New blog post”, for mailing the store - “New offers from Shop X”, for mailing the Internet service - “Digest of service X”, etc. work for sending a blog.

Utility . Based on the header, the recipient must decide that the letter could be potentially useful. If the utility is not obvious, then it is recommended to use heading formulas: “Who else wants ...?”, “22 ways ...”, “Little-known ways ...”, “Fast way ...”, “Everything you wanted to know about ... but they were afraid to ask, "etc. Such formulations are good for newsletters, but for those who sell can be dangerous (see prev.).
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Brevity . Any letter can be compressed up to 140 characters. First, having received a dry squeeze from the text, you will be able to rethink it and edit it so that it more closely matches the basic idea. Secondly, the recipient will immediately understand whether he is interested in this letter. Thirdly, a good title can and should be used not only in the email newsletter, but also on Twitter, and in other information channels. If it fits in 120 characters, you will have room for an abbreviated link (such as bit.ly/p8EhUS ). Amazon generally recommends an average of 52 characters - rightly noting that long headers are not displayed entirely in many email programs.

Structure The most important thing is in the first two or three words (subject, predicate, addition). For example: “Today Apple has invented a phone!” (From Steve Jobs’s iPhone presentation). The word "today" for the mailing format can be removed. All details after a colon, dash, dot, etc. The recipient of the letter does not spend a lot of time deciding to read the letter immediately, leave it for later, put it in the back box, delete it or send it to spam. Letters beginning with greetings (“Hello”) and undefined words (“Latest news”) are the losers.

Relevance . No one needs information if it is not timely. If your audience is internet marketers, and in cinemas there is a film called “Social Network”, make the headline “This article is not about the film“ Social Network ””. And vice versa, if iPads are no longer a sensation (sensations live for a couple of days) - the title with their participation will work in the negative. Follow the flow of information. Subscribe to the “opinion leaders” twitter and take them one step ahead. In turn, the "stars" attract attention more or less constantly. For example, the title is good to start with the hero of the story: Apple, Habrahabr, Zuckerberg (for the IT audience). But be careful, the hero does not save, if the title is generally irrelevant or empty.

Personality The German division of Amazon often writes the full name of the addressee in the title, and the American and British - once a month as an experiment. Why? Germans get less spam. In Russia, spam is all “good,” and the culture of email marketing is bad, so addressing the message header causes a rather negative reaction. Moreover, the appeal takes place. On the other hand, you can give the letter a personal character.

• If the content of the letter is unique for each recipient, it will be useful to indicate this in the header. For example, when I receive a letter with the heading “Recommended Movie Billboard,” I know that the list of films in the letter is intended for me and for no one else. The same Amazon.de more often personalizes the headers of letters about discounts and promotions - they look more tempting when offered personally to you, rather than to all customers.
• If the content of the letter is the same for all recipients, you can appeal to the needs of the recipient. For example, "How to set up your newsletter for your site." True, we in quantity receive similar letters from spammers (a la “How to make a million?”), So before using such headers, you must make sure that the recipient understands what they mean. For example, a letter with a header about setting up a mailing is preceded by confirmation of registration with the mailing service.
  

From whom Often the name of the sender in the “from” field is not enough for the recipient to understand from whom and about whom the letter is. If the “from whom” name is displayed, then in the title you can indicate what the sender is: online store, marketing guru, plumbing sales company, etc. It is useful to specify similar information in each heading. Thus, the first part of the header reflects the content of the letter, the second - the content of the mailing and the essence of the sender. You can afford not to specify such information if you have a popular brand.

Hot topics . The title “Tea for two confessed to homosexuality” provides the attention of people belonging to the “TV audience”. The title “We are closing down” in a letter from the market major (about closing a stock, a ruler, anything, but not the company itself) will alarm customers of this market. The title “All customers are lying” will hook marketing and salespeople. Learn from the experience of news sites: unlikely things bordering on science fiction (“Found the Cancer Gene”) and revelations (“Double bookkeeping * company name *) are popular. There is always a demand for sex and violence.

Intrigue . Perhaps the most effective and most difficult way to attract the reader through the headline. The secret is simple: the reader must ask a question that he cannot answer without reading the entire letter. Accordingly, the easiest way to create intrigue is a title in the form of a question. “Do your customers lie to you?” - if the recipient is not a telepath, he cannot answer this question. Of course, the question should affect the interests of the recipient.

Split test headers

So, you used the listed principles, but are not satisfied with the response. In this case, the advice is simple: try other options and watch the difference in efficiency - conduct split tests.

In UniSender, you can conduct split tests using Google Analytics, which allows you to integrate email marketing with other advertising campaigns - you can compare the effectiveness of different email headers with the effectiveness of other marketing tools.

1. We divide the database of recipients into as many parts as the headers we want to test.
2. For each part of the database we create our own mailing list in Unisender.
3. For each mailing, we invent the value of the Campaign parameter and enter it in the settings for integration with Google Analytics in Unisender - in the “Personal information” section in the “My Account” section. Recommended values ​​for other settings are shown in Fig. below.
   
4. We launch the newsletter and wait 24 hours until Google Analytics updates the statistics.
5. If desired, we look at the indicators for all mailings as a whole (Traffic sources → All traffic sources → filter Source / channel: unisender / email).
   
6. We compare the indicators of mailings with different headers (Traffic Sources → Campaigns → Campaign filter: {{{CampaignId}}}).

Based on the values ​​in the "Visits" column, you can judge the effectiveness of a particular header.