In this episode of his podcast, host Jay Schwedelson shares some effective email marketing tips for increasing open and click-through rates. He provides specific advice around using hero stats in subject lines, optimizing email length, structuring paragraphs, and limiting form fields. Listeners can expect to learn data-driven best practices to improve email campaign performance.
Main Discussion Points:
– Using a compelling “hero stat” instead of promotional language in subject lines lifts open rates over 20% (00:00:34)
– Keep emails under 75 words for prospects and 100 words for customers for the best click-through rates on offers (00:04:29, 00:05:02)
– Shorter paragraphs perform better – 3 lines per paragraph boosts clicks 25% vs 5 lines (00:06:11)
– Every additional required form field reduces form completion rate by 8% (00:07:08)
And MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!
Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!
Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!
Transcript
Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.
You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.
Jay Schwedelson:We'Re here. Do this, not that we are back. And I'm excited. I'm always excited. I'm excited to share some of the latest things that we're seeing that are working.
That's what we're going to do today. We are going to share some test ideas that you may not have tried that we are seeing working right now. So let's first talk about this test idea.
Business and consumer marketers, I don't think I probably have even tried it all, let alone are doing enough. And that is using a HERO stat in your subject line. Ooh.
We're seeing in the last six months when marketers use both business and consumer marketers use a HERO stat in their subject line and that's it. And in their subject line is increasing open rates by over 20%. Now, what is a HERO stat? Right? Most of the time in your subject line, what do you do?
Right? You're writing, check out this great webinar or 20% off discount or something along those lines.
You're talking about what the offer it is that you are promoting. But instead of doing that, what we should be thinking about is what is that one compelling thing?
What is that one statistic or that one hero thing that you want to say that you know, is the hook to get the person excited when you open up, it may be the headline of your email or it might be that one line that you put under your headline to get people excited. That is what we want to use in the subject line and that's what's lifting open rates by over 20%. So let me give you some examples.
So on the business side, a HERO stat in the subject line example would be this. Over 70% of HR directors don't know this. Or 88% of cloud solutions are not secure. That's it. You're not saying anything else you're not saying?
And check out our webinar about it and download this guide about it. Any. No, you're just saying the thing you're saying and the person like, whoa, that's amazing. I got to find out more.
Now on the consumer side, okay, you could be saying Things like only 300 pieces produced or our trend predictions were spot on the last five seasons. Or jeans that fit like a dream. 96% of shoppers say our denim provides the perfect fit. We are not saying buy this.
You're not saying, here's the discount. You're giving a piece of information that you know, whether it's business or consumer, the person's gonna be like, wow, this is really compelling.
I need to check out what's going on inside this email. You're creating that interest.
So a hero stat in the subject line and that's it, without any other promotional information is a great test that we're seeing lifting open rates by over 20%. Now.
Another interesting thing that I get asked about a lot is how long or short how many words, okay, should be in an email that you're sending out how many words? And that's a great question.
The first thing you have to always think about with words is the first step is not how many words are going to be in your email, but who you're sending your email to. The reason I say that is if you are emailing to prospect versus emailing to existing customers. Existing customers sort of like you.
They sort of care about what you want to say. Prospects barely care about you at all. They're barely interested in anything that you are writing about.
And the reason that matters is you could be a little bit more verbose with customers than you can with prospects.
So it's not like you write one email and that's the email that you can send to both prospects and customers because they're two different audiences completely, right? I mean, think about for yourself. I use my CRM platform.
If we get an email from that platform, which I spend a boatload of money with, okay, I'm going to read that email because I'm like, I'm already spending the money. I got to know what they, what they're saying. Whereas if it's some other CRM platform that's trying to get me to switch over, I'm barely interested.
But I'll check it out. But only if there's just a short paragraph in there. Not a lot of words, right? That's the mentality. So the secret sauce numbers are like this.
When you are marketing to prospects, you need to keep it under 75 words. Over 75 words will lead to a 31% lower overall click through rate. That's for an offer related email. Okay, so 75 words.
If you go over 75 words, you're going to see lower than you're going to see a 31% drop in overall click through rate. Now, it doesn't sound like a lot of words and it's not because you know what, we don't care. We are being prospected to. Okay, so that is the number.
Now we're talking to existing customers. Existing customers. You also want to keep it short if it's offer related. This is not your newsletter.
This is not some sort of new product highlight, you know, something like that. This is literally talking about offer related emails. So for current customers, it's 100 words.
If you send over 100 words, we see a 25% lower overall click through rate. It could be a little bit more verbose, but overall it's not like you want to write to. You don't want to get to 74 words because I said 75.
You don't want to get to 99 words because I said 100. Shorter is better. That's the way it goes. And it's not just the number of words, but it's how you construct the words in your messaging.
So the paragraphs in your emails need to be very short. You ever get a long text from somebody and you're like, I'm not reading that. That looks like annoying.
And you don't even read it because it's just too many lines in the paragraph that you got a text of. It's the same thing in email.
We did this study and we looked at if you have three lines in a paragraph when you email out versus five lines if you have four lines in a paragraph versus five lines. So when you have three lines in a paragraph, your click rate Is goes up 25% versus when you have five lines in a paragraph.
Lines of words if you have four lines in your paragraph, your click rate goes up 15% versus five lines. The reason being is when you get an email that has five lines of text, it doesn't matter what it said.
It could literally say you just won the lottery and you won't read it. You will not read it because it looks and feels boring.
Jay Schwedelson:Okay?
Jay Schwedelson:And it's all in your subconscious. You're flying really fast. So if you can keep your paragraphs to three lines, that is money. That is where you want to be.
Jay Schwedelson:Okay?
Jay Schwedelson:Now the last little tip that I think is super interesting is must fill fields on your destination pages or landing pages, whatever the pages are. Must. Must fill fields. The fields you're saying you need to fill out this field or else you can't go any further.
Here's the stat that I think is super useful for every additional must fill field that you have on your form, you will lose 8% of your registrations. You lose 8% of your registrations.
And the reason I share that is sometimes marketers will make these forms and they'll be like, oh, what should we ask? As if it's like a wish list of data that you can collect. No, you. You're not. No one's.
If somebody sees a lot of fields, they're not filling out your form, a massive turnoff. It feels like homework.
And what you want to be saying to yourself is not what data can I collect, but what is the least amount of data that I need in order to turn this into a lead, a customer prospect, or whatever. This is not where you get to get everything you want. You're going to get that over time, right?
So for every additional must fill field that you require, you're going to lose 8% of your registrations. Oh, now, before we get into. Since you didn't ask, which is the segment of this podcast that just goes sideways every. I am.
I never plan out exactly what I'm going to say, and it just goes bananas. But before we get there, I want to share with you that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.
Now, I love talking about Marigold because it's a platform that I use to send out my email. Now, if you've never heard of Marigold, they are a combination.
They brought together all these amazing brands like Sail through and Cheetah Digital and Campaign Monitor and all these other awesome marketing platform brands under one umbrella, which is called Marigold. I've been using it for years. I send out billions of emails. They also have loyalty marketing programs and relationship marketing programs.
It is awesome.
Jay Schwedelson:Okay?
Jay Schwedelson:And so if you are thinking about, oh, man, I can't stand my email platform. I need to find a new one. Or I'm thinking about launching a loyalty marketing program. I don't even know where to begin.
And I'm telling you, okay, go to meet marigold.com that the URL is meet marigold.com. you'll find everything there. I use it. It's a great platform. Check out Marigold.
All right, now we get into the segment of the thing called since you didn't ask. So what's on my mind? I have no idea. I'm assuming people out there have this. I don't know.
I feel like everybody does, but I'm on a text chain with my closest friends from college.
Jay Schwedelson:Okay.
Jay Schwedelson:And I graduated college a bunch of years ago, and we've been on this text chain ever, ever since. Okay, there's six of us, all right? And literally, I'm not a big texter. I mean, I just don't text people back. I'm horrible.
But on this one text chain, I do participate a lot. And the thing I realized is last night, the tech at my college text chain, which was going crazy. I don't. You.
I communicate on that text chain like, I don't communicate anywhere else. I use language, which is just crazy.
And the worst part about this text chain is that these guys that I've been buddies with for a zillion years, they know me. They've known me since I was, like, 18 years old. And we cut each other down so fast and so harshly.
If anybody else did this to me in my life, I would never talk to them again. I'll say something like, oh, I'm going to do this. And they'll be like, you're such a loser.
You've been a loser since you hung out with whoever back in college, and that girl was also a loser. They will cut me down so fast and so quickly, and they will bring up things that nobody. That is just. It makes me feel like garbage instantly.
And then when I.
When it happens, I immediately turn around and I will say the rudest thing I could possibly think of and bring up stories from the past that should never be retold.
And, oh, my God, Google Photos is the greatest thing in the world, because whenever one of my friends says something horrible about me, what I do is I go on Google Photos, I put in their name, and I will find the worst possible picture that I have from, like, 15 years ago of that person, and I'll be like, yeah, but you're disgusting. And I'll send this picture, right? And that's what I do, and that's what we do.
And I don't know if this is how everybody else functions, but somehow this is a normal part of my daily existence is. Is to just get shredded by this one text chain and then to also shred people. This is very important information. I know you all care a lot.
Oh, my goodness. But what you should care about is. Let's see what's going on. I don't know.
You could find out stuff about whatever I'm up to@jschwedelson.com by the way, I'm on Instagram now, too, and my handle is at the full name, jschwedelson. So find me on Instagram. And what else? I don't know. Check out Guru Events, and you're awesome.
Hope you're having a great day and send a mean text to your chain of friends from college. You did it.
Jay Schwedelson:You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.
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