Adestra: What words to use in subject lines

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www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Wednesday 11th September 2013

How Obama brought the sexy back to email And also – how you can have better subject lines

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Parry Malm

• Heads up account management team

• With Adestra since 2010

• Used MessageFocus since 2006

• Blogs on Econsultancy sometimes

• Likes beards, bacon and whiskey

This is me

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Email is dead.

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

That sucks.

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Oh wait.

• 2.4 billion internet users worldwide

• 2.2 billion webmail accounts (not including B2B)

• 1 billion Facebook accounts

• 200 million Twitter accounts

• 187 million LinkedIn accounts

• 32 MySpace accounts

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Today’s Agenda

1. Subject lines kind of matter for today’s publishers.

2. And here’s why.

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Recognise this guy?

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Facebook gave him thumbs

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But email gave him money.

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

His campaign’s digital team

• 30 people total

• 24 focused on email

• 4 on social

• 2 did… erm… something else, presumably

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

What did they learn?

• Subject lines matter

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Subject lines are kind of a big deal.

• We had a hunch

• We tested that hunch

• It was awesome and just may change your life* *This is not a guarantee.

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Caveats

• Correlations, not causation

• Long run averages

• Large spread due to large data set

• Not the silver bullet…

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Methodology

• 2.2 billion emails across the last 12 months

• >95,000 cross-sector campaigns including B2B Publishing, B2C Publishing

• 40% UK, 60% ROW

• All English language

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Statistics are fun.

• Look at variance from the mean, not nominal statistics

• Also look at 1st-3rd quartiles to describe spread

• It almost broke Excel

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Change screens Parry!

• Oh yeah! Glad I put in this reminder.

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

This is the fun part!* *It’s not actually fun

Want your keywords tested?

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

Email will never be sexy

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

It’ll never be cool

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

And it’s often forgotten about

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

But it works.

• Revenue per $1:

• Email: $39.40

• Search: $22.38

• Display: $19.71

• Social: $12.90

• Source: DMA

www.adestra.com @adestra parry@adestra.com

www.adestra.com/subjectline

Download the report now

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