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Are Letter-Style Emails Still Effective? New research reveals how customers read emails today Picture your next email send. Are you confident when your ideal customer sees it in her inbox, she’ll open, click through and buy from you? If you are, how can you be sure? • Are you using the right template? • Are you using too many images? • Do you have too much or too little copy? • Should your email be more personal? Or more corporate? On this clinic, we explore a recent email experiment with an international media company. The marketers there pitted a typical trendy email design with a straightforward letter-style email to a list of millions of names.
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Are Letter-Style Emails Still Effective?New research reveals how customers read emails today
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Today's Speaker
Dr. Flint McGlaughlin – Managing Director, MECLABS
Flint McGlaughlin is the Managing Director of MECLABS Group. The organization has partnered with key market leaders including The New York Times, Microsoft Corporation, and Reuters Group.
Dr. McGlaughlin also serves as the Director of Enterprise Research at the Transforming Business Institute, University of Cambridge (UK), as the Chairman of the Board of Governors for St. Stephen’s University, and as a Trustee for Westminster Theological Centre. Dr. McGlaughlin originally studied Philosophy and Theology at the University of London’s Specialist Jesuit College.
Today, his primary research is focused on enterprise as transformative agent. His work has won multiple awards and has been quoted in more than 13,000 online and offline sources.
@FlintsNotes
Background: A large international media company focusing on increasing subscription rates.
Goal: To increase the number of conversions based on the value proposition conveyed through the email.
Primary Research Question: Which email will generate the highest conversion rate?
Approach: A/B multifactor split test
Experiment ID: TP2137Record Location: MECLABS Research LibraryResearch Partner: [Protected]
Research Notes:
Experiment: Background
CONTROL: Promotional style email
• Uses popular design principles to create balance and hierarchy on the page.
• Heavy use of images and graphics to catch the reader’s attention.
• Multiple call-to-action buttons for increased points of entry.
Experiment: Control
TREATMENT: Letter style email
• Designed to look and feel more like a personal letter.
• Limited use of graphics and images.
• One call-to-action button
Experiment: Treatment Subject Line: Get Unlimited Access to [Product] with Home Delivery
Subject Line: Open this now for Special Savings
Experiment: Side by sideControl
VS.
Subject Line: Get Unlimited Access to [Product] with Home Delivery
Treatment
181%Increase in Conversion
Experiment: Results
Conversion Rate
Control – Standard Email 0.04%Treatment – Letter-style Email 0.12%Relative Difference 181%
! What You Need to Understand: By limiting the amount of graphics, and focusing on engaging the customer in a conversation, the treatment outperformed the control by 181%
Increase in conversion The overall conversion rate increased 181% due to a clearly stated value proposition.
181%
Why did the letter-style email win?
Subject Line: Get Unlimited Access to [Product] with Home Delivery
Why?
1. An email message is not a monologue; it is a dialog. People don’t buy from emails; people buy from people.
2. If the marketer can learn to participate with the prospect’s conversation, they can guide it (with messaging) towards a satisfactory conclusion (the purchase).
3. Therefore, effective email messaging requires one often overlooked skill on the part of the marketer: Empathy.
F Key Learnings
Effective Email Messaging
• Selfishness, if a benign version, is the primary driver of sales velocity. It is the selfishness of the prospect which empowers the transaction.
• The concept, selfishness, has a negative connotation. But this can be unfortunate…how can a self be faulted for being self(ish)? In one sense, selfishness is essence(tial).”
• Empathy enables the marketer to identify with the market and experience its “selfishness”. Empathy is the marketer’s intuition.
• The marketer does not eliminate their self; we seek to empty ourself, identifying with the "self" of the prospect – This paradoxical move enables us to achieve that empathetic messagingwhich powers true conversion.
Empathy: For the marketer, empathy is their ability to discern – through listening and hearing – the ontology (nature or being) of the customer.
Effective Email Messaging
Subject Line: Open this now for Special Savings
Problems with the promotional style email:
• The control is not empathetic toward the customer. Commanding the customer to act in the subject line and CTA.
• Feels like a promotional email, therefore customers feel like they are being marketed to, not communicated with.
• The email is relying on a design approach to grab the customers interest, rather than a conversation.
ControlEffective Email Messaging
Subject Line: Get Unlimited Access to [Product] with Home Delivery
Why the personal style email won:
• More conversational in the subject line than control.
• Empathizes with the customer, using a personal email style, the customer feels like they are having a conversation.
• The design is crafted into one clear message.
TreatmentEffective Email Messaging
Subject Line: Open this now for Special Savings
Control
Subject Line: Get Unlimited Access to [Product] with Home Delivery
Treatment
Summary
• With the use of empathy, we were able to craft an email message which…
1. Connected to the recipient in a personal way.
2. Engaged the participate in an actual conversation.
3. Increased email response by 181%.
Live OptimizationEmail Style Tests
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Email Messaging Online Course
• Build strong lists
• Craft effective emails
• Connect Clicks to Sales
Save $100 before 10/31Discount Code
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