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Data from Adestra’s subject line study indicates that when it comes to the e-commerce sector, the results are fairly mixed. Subject lines 110 characters in length performed best for open rates (122.4% above-average), but those 70-characters-long did best for click rates (91.1% above-average), while those with 30 characters achieved the best CTOR (17.4% above-average), despite the latter having below-average open and click rates. Overall, subject lines with 70 characters appeared to do the best, with above-average performance in each metric. (August 2012) 1For the events sector, short subject lines (20-30 characters) got the highest open rates, while longer subject lines (120-150 characters) got the best click rates and CTOR. Publishing emails displayed the same pattern as events emails, though for charity emails, short subject lines had the highest open, click, and click-to-open rates. (August 2012) 2Overall, across the 6 sectors studied, despite an open rate peak for emails with 20 characters, longer subject lines (100+ characters) appeared to deliver better open, click, and click-to-open rates. This compares with recent studies from MailerMailer and Informz, which found shorter subject lines to clearly have the best open rates, though with mixed results for click rates. (August 2012) 3Looking at the results by sector, some interesting patterns emerge. For e-commerce emails, 1-word subject lines had the highest open rate, but 4-word lines had the best highest CTOR relative to the average. For events emails, shorter word counts (2-5) delivered the best open rates relative to the average, but longer word counts (19 and up) delivered both the best click and click-to-open rates relative to the average. (August 2012) 4For the publishing sector, the results were clearer: longer subject lines delivered generally higher-than-average open, click, and click-to-open rates, aside from a spike at 2 words. For the charity sector, short subject lines did well for open and click rates, and longer counts (14 words and up) performed worst for click-to-open rates. (August 2012) 5Notably, the study finds that for the e-commerce sector, the word “coupon” has open rates that are 55.6% below the average for offers emails, with click rates also 85.8% below-average and CTOR 68.1% below-average. This appears to be in direct contradiction to results from an Epsilon study also released in July, which found that the keyword “coupon” was tops for email opens. However, that study only measured the 2011 holiday season, which may explain the discrepancy in results. (August 2012) 6In the B2B and B2C sectors, open, click, and click-to-open rates were generally better for longer word counts, though 2-word subject lines performed best overall in the B2B sector. (August 2012) 7According to a July 2012 report from Experian, including the word “exclusive” in the subject line can provide a lift of 14% in promotion mailings (15.9% with vs. 14% without). Similarly, subject lines including “top 10″ or “top 5″ deliver open rates 13% higher than promotional emails without them (16.1% vs. 14.3%). (August 2012) 8Also per the Experian findings, emails asking customers to rate and review purchased items generate 2 times higher open rates, 39% higher click rates, 22% higher transaction rates, and 32% higher revenue per email. (August 2012) 9This opinion varied widely across industries with over 70 per cent of CEOs in education, telecommunications and retail expecting social media to be a key channel for customer engagement but only 34 per cent of CEOs in industrial products thinking likewise. (July 2012) 10 |
Email marketing is a significant line-item in those budgets according to the Pardot survey, which revealed that 27% of B2B marketers allocate 26-50% of their budgets to email, and 9% more than half of their budgets. (July 2012) 11The most popular marketing tactics used by B2B companies are digital, according to [pdf] a survey released in July 2012 by Sagefrog Marketing Group. When asked which of 16 common marketing tactics they use, 94% of B2B marketers pointed to websites, followed by email (76%), social media (68%), and SEO (58%). (July 2012) 12While social media ranked third in popularity among the 16 marketing tactics, the 68% of respondents indicating use of this channel represents 14% point growth from 2011. 58% of companies rated social media as important (42%) or very important (16%), compared to just 10% who rated it unimportant. (July 2012) 13Social media is of course a broad category, and those B2B companies that use social media tactics use several of them. The top five in use are: social networks (79%, up from 66% last year); blogs (48%, up from 34%); micro-blogs (37%, up from 26%); video sharing (35%, up from 29%); and forums and communities (30%, up from 19%). (July 2012) 14Though they also grew in popularity from last year, photo sharing (16%), document sharing (15%), ratings and reviews (13%), and bookmarking/tagging (11%) are not in widespread use. (July 2012) 1562% of companies in the Sagefrog study spend 5% or more of their revenue on marketing, and 13% companies allocate more than 15%. 44% expect to increase their marketing budgets next year (up from 40% last year), 50% expect to keep those budgets level, and just 6% plan to decrease their budgets. (July 2012) 16The Adyen report also found that 12.6% of daily deal site transactions originate from a mobile device, and 7.2% of retail sector transactions also come from a mobile device. (July 2012) 17Despite having lower cost per click (CPC) rates than PCs, tablets offered a 68% higher ROI than PCs for US search advertisers in Q2, based on 20% higher conversion rates, according to a July 2012 report from Adobe. (July 2012) 18Overall, search spend increased on a year-over-year basis for PCs, tablets, and smartphones, with smartphones offering a slightly higher ROI than PCs. In Q2, for financial services advertisers, conversion rates for tablets were 22% higher than for PCs, while for retail campaigns, they were 19% higher. Smartphone conversion rates were 38% and 43% lower than for PCs, respectively. (July 2012) 19When it comes to ROI, tablets scored 55% higher than PCs for financial services advertisers, and 73% higher for retail campaigns. While paid search ROI was 12% lower for smartphones than PCs for the financial services sector, it was 16% higher for the retail sector. (July 2012) 20 |
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