![SUBJECT LINE TESTING –
CATEGORIZATION
Question: Do we have enough subject line testing data to write the perfect subject line?
Hypothesis: If we analyze all historical subject lines, then we will be able to write a formula for the ideal
subject line.
Process: Tested over 180 subject lines to provide statistically significant data around what engages the
audience more. Throughout the process, subject lines were tagged with the following pieces of metadata:
Type
Asset: [ARTICLE] How cloud security has evolved.
Benefit: Don’t open unless you’d like operational savings of up to 50%
Ellipses: 80% of businesses have experienced it...
Question: 44 zettabytes by 2020?
Personalization
City, Company, First Name, First Name & Company, First Name & Last Name, or State
Product Reference
Has <Your Company> asked the #1 cloud security question?
Brand Reference
<Your Company> could save up to 50% with existing Oracle technology
Number of Characters Used
50% ops savings by modernizing IT
Character Length
Drive <Your Company> cost efficiencies with PaaS. (49 Characters)
Forty Four X (12 Characters)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/movingbeyondemailbestpractices-171002180524/85/Moving-Beyond-Email-Best-Practices-25-320.jpg)
Moving Beyond (Email) Best Practices
- 1. MOVING BEYOND (EMAIL) BEST PRACTICES Modern Marketing Bootcamp Series Brian Maschler Chief Creative Officer
- 2. Best practices are a starting point, not the destination.
- 3. THE “BEST PRACTICE” PARADOX INNOVATION INVOLVES TRYING NEW THINGS DO YOUR HOMEWORK Research what experts say works best. Try that. Measure the results to get a baseline for your brand. LEARN,ADJUST Be patient. Measure everything. Get real, human feedback. BE CREATIVE Develop new ideas to better capture the attention of your audience. Rinse, repeat Where innovation happens “Best Practices”
- 4. BEING HONEST ABOUT EMAIL INTERACTION How real human beings actually engage with email - and what that means for marketers.
- 5. Email is always going to be a great place to reach people because it’s where work gets done. To paraphrase Seth Godin, email is the pinnacle of “permission marketing” – so the stakes are high. Users must allow you into their inbox. Put your agenda in front of theirs & you’re out of the club, permanently.
- 6. Attention vs. Engagement Email Content
- 7. WHEN IT COMES TO OPENING EMAILS, PEOPLE ACT ON EMOTION, NOT LOGIC.
- 8. TWO CONVERSIONS. TWO CONVERSATIONS. What looks important? What looks urgent? What looks fun? Do I care? What do I need to do? Do I have time to look at this right now? Open Click-through
- 9. CREATING INSPIRED EMAILS So what’s the secret to writing better emails? How do B2B marketers send more relevant content?
- 11. CREATIVE STRATEGY TRACK YOUR INSPIRATION Would you pay attention to that? …Would you really? Many people aren’t great at analyzing their own behavior. Start paying attention to what captures your attention via email. Keep a “swipe file” with notes about what you liked.
- 12. “Modern marketing, the craft of getting ideas to spread, has split. On one side are the roboticists. They test and measure and do what works. They do it with no interest in how people decide or what they believe or what story they tell themselves. Instead, they treat the human as an ant in an ant farm, a robot that does this or that. They're behaviorists. On the other are those that seek to get to the heart of what makes us human. These marketers know that fear, shame, desire for gain and culture are the quartet that drive just about every decision. They know that…truly understanding our narratives is the essence of doing work that matters, that connects, and that spreads. There are ever more tools for folks who do the former, but the problem is that this is work that gets easier to automate and easier to hire for. On the other hand, the ranks of people who understand, who understand well enough to lead, to decide and most of all, to see... There are never enough of these people doing the work that matters.” - Seth Godin, 5/2/17
- 13. EXAMPLE: SYMANTEC RENEWAL NURTURE HUMANIZING THE BRAND Before Refresh AfterBulldog Solutions redesigned Symantec’s customer renewal program and instantly saw a 20% increase in engagement. The simple shift from brand-centric communications to customer-centric communications made all the difference. • More personal, more tangible • Align to how IT professionals think about web security solutions (They aren’t trying to be warriors, they just want to avoid headaches)
- 14. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: CONTENT Most emails are about conversion; a means to an end. So, start with the content, then work your way back to the email design/theme, etc. The email is designed to sell the content – so you can’t write/design that in a vacuum. Normally, email is a vehicle… not the destination. Read more about matching content to the buyer’s journey: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content- for-every-funnel-stage
- 15. Measured engagement Insights, scoring, qualification, segmentation Behavioral Email Nurture
- 16. INTERACTIVE CONTENT Learn about the person receiving your emails to deliver real value.
- 17. BEHAVIORAL EMAIL NURTURING Better client service at lower cost Efficiency Lifestyle Based on how they interact with those fun experiences, you can nurture them with thoughtful communications that are aligned to what you know about them.
- 18. LEAD SCORING - BEYOND EMAIL… How B2B Marketers score leads shouldn’t be limited to email. What if you could track and score the behavior of your audience based on how they moved through educational sessions at a physical conference? With new technology, you can. We’ve done it.
- 19. ALWAYS BE SELLING TESTING It’s a way of marketing, not a phase of your program. Every email send is an opportunity to learn.
- 20. TESTING & OPTIMIZATION Let’s take a look at a full year of email testing for Oracle.
- 21. AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION Question: Will creating a definition around new, actives and inactives help with targeting our audience? Hypothesis: If we categorize records into buckets of new, active or inactive, then we can get better insight into what content is engaging our audience. Findings: By creating three segments for deployments, metrics could be reported for new, active and inactive audiences. This gave us the ability to determine what worked with engagers and what converted inactive contacts to active contacts. Hypothesis confirmed. Combined Audience Reporting Segmented Audience Reporting
- 22. AUDIENCE: THE PURGE Question: Should we continue to email contacts who have never been active? Hypothesis: If we remove inactive contacts from the database, then we will have better insight into what the engaged audience wants to consume. Findings: By sending the unsubscribe email, we could determine records that no longer want to receive emails (unsubscribers), records that want to stay in the communication stream (open, no unsubscribe) or records that truly are inactive (no open). Unsubscribes and no-opens were then purged from the system to allow for communication with a truly active audience. Hypothesis confirmed. Message Sent to Inactive Contacts June saw highest open rates to date. Subject Line: Hello, <First Name>? Are you there?
- 23. THE CREATIVE – A BREAK FROM THE ROUTINE Question: Would engagement increase if we offered a different kind of content? Hypothesis: If we offer hyper-personalized content, then engagement will increase. Process: Worked with Vidyard to create personalized holiday videos for our audience. Findings: December saw the highest conversion from inactive to actives and, with lag considered, the highest meetings set to date in the campaign. Hypothesis confirmed. Within one month of this campaign, meetings reached a high to date.
- 24. SUBJECT LINE TESTING – THE PROGRESSION Introduction of Personalization A: How will <Your Company> manage all that data? Open Rate: 11.24% B: <First Name> <Last Name>, here’s your guide on storage arrays… Open Rate: 9.68% A: I heard a lot about Cloud at OpenWorld, but... Open Rate: 5.56% B: Will the Cloud make data backups... Open Rate: 6.19% Introduction of Subject Line Meta Data Testing of over 180 subject lines allowed for categorization of metadata to create the ideal subject lines. Goal: Use A/B subject line testing to increase open rates with a fully purchased audience by understanding what subject lines resonate more.
- 25. SUBJECT LINE TESTING – CATEGORIZATION Question: Do we have enough subject line testing data to write the perfect subject line? Hypothesis: If we analyze all historical subject lines, then we will be able to write a formula for the ideal subject line. Process: Tested over 180 subject lines to provide statistically significant data around what engages the audience more. Throughout the process, subject lines were tagged with the following pieces of metadata: Type Asset: [ARTICLE] How cloud security has evolved. Benefit: Don’t open unless you’d like operational savings of up to 50% Ellipses: 80% of businesses have experienced it... Question: 44 zettabytes by 2020? Personalization City, Company, First Name, First Name & Company, First Name & Last Name, or State Product Reference Has <Your Company> asked the #1 cloud security question? Brand Reference <Your Company> could save up to 50% with existing Oracle technology Number of Characters Used 50% ops savings by modernizing IT Character Length Drive <Your Company> cost efficiencies with PaaS. (49 Characters) Forty Four X (12 Characters)
- 26. SUBJECT LINE TESTING – FINDINGS 20% 40% 60% -20% -40% -60% Personalized Questions Non- Personalized Questions First Name & Company Personalization Not Personalized Brand Reference Number of Characters Used 60–79 Characters Used City Personalization 20–29 Characters Used Avg. Open Rate Findings: The ideal subject lines for this audience: • ask a question, • are personalized, • reference the brand, • use a number • and are 60–79 characters. • <First Name>, are your competitors outpacing you with the best-of-breed? • <Your Company> could save up to 50% with existing Oracle technology
- 27. CTAS – NUMBER OF ASSETS 9% below avg. conversion 7% below avg. conversion 22% above avg conversion Question: What is the right number of assets to be offered in an email? Hypothesis: If we promote one asset per email, then subject lines and copy can be more aligned with the offer, which may increase engagement. Findings: 1 asset outperforms any other number of assets
- 28. THE RESULTS 88% Increase in unique open rate 31% Decrease in dials to deliverables 64% Increase in scheduled meetings November 2015 compared to June 2016 (allows for two-month onboarding period)
- 29. WHAT TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN OPTIMIZING • Determine a question you want to answer through testing. Don’t make assumptions about anything. Best practices may work, but test them before trusting them. • Test one aspect at a time to know what resonates with your audience. Testing multiple pieces at the same time will limit your ability to tie back increases or decreases in performance. • Optimization is not limited to subject lines. Make sure to consider messaging themes, type of content, system configuration, etc. • Optimization testing doesn’t always mean you will see improvements. Lots of the results above were surprising and wouldn’t have been determined without testing. If something doesn’t work, take it as a lesson learned and keep going. • There are always going to be factors outside of your control that may have an impact on performance, e.g., list degradation, employee turnover.
- 30. ADVANCED MANEUVERS • Alternative ideas for using video in B2B • Animated formats to bring motion into your email
- 31. USING VIDEO AS TRANSITIONAL CONTENT Most Marketers think of video as the content. Sometimes, it’s just the content that carries your audience to your real content. We call this “segue content” or “transitional content.”
- 32. Using platforms like Vidyard, Marketers can use interactive calls-to-action within entertaining video content to introduce audiences to more academic learning material (white papers, e-books, etc.) In this case, Bulldog Solutions created a video series with tips for IT professionals to survive their family over the holidays. The main call to action: download a white paper. This approach saw over 300% increase in content conversion.
- 33. TO GIF OR NOT TO GIF 10 Great Email GIF Examples (#6 is a B2B example) Guide to GIFs in Email If you decide to GIF, a few words of advice: • Use animation judiciously – and rarely • Use it purposefully (to add value to the email)
- 34. GET PERSONAL…BUT NOT TOO PERSONAL B2B Marketers can use new techniques like Personalized Video (also available from Vidyard) to create truly 1:1, authentic experiences at scale. Ex: a personalized client appreciation video we created for our clients…
- 35. GETTING PERSONAL WITH ABM
- 36. TOP TAKEAWAYS
- 37. 5 IDEAS TO CONSIDER 1. Email Marketing is a battle for attention. Keep track of what grabs your attention. Start an email “swipe file.” 2. Get to know the people you’re sending to. Talk to them from where they stand today. Learn more. 3. The best email nurturing comes from behavioral insights Read 10 ways to engage your audience with interactive content. 4. Always be testing See Marketo’s Guidance on Optimizing Email. 5. Tread carefully when using personalization and motion. With great power comes great responsibility. Check out Hubspot’s blog on great examples.
- 38. Bulldog is a modern marketing agency exclusively focused on complex B2B. Channel Program of the Year SiriusDecisions, 2016 Best Video Content “Finny” Killer Content Awards 2017 Best Direct Mail Campaign BMA Global ACE Awards 2017 Best Integrated Media Campaign FCS Portfolio Awards 2017 “StackMaster” Revvie Finalist Marketo Revvies 2017 Highest Conversion Response from a Content Program – Content Marketing Awards 2016 Best Integrated Marketing Program BMA Global ACE Awards 2016 Kapost Top 50 Kapost 2017 2017 B2B Top Shop Chief Marketer 2017 ABMie Finalist FlipMyFunnel 2017 Best Social Campaign Oracle Markies (Gold) 2017
Editor's Notes
- #4: Challenge the perception of best practices. Seen differently, they are a race to average. It’s a great way to avoid face planting (CYA strategy) – Best practices will yield incremental improvements - not exponential. Understand best practices. It’s good to thoughtfully challenging status quo. What you want to avoid is breaking the rules because you don’t know the rules.
- #8: DOES THIS SEEM FUN? People expect entertainment… understand your personas. Social media has raised the bar…. Short attention spans and instant gratification!
- #9: Too many marketers treat the subject line as a quick, logical afterthought to the email (“just say what the email is about, right?” - Not exactly.) While final B2B purchase decisions are the result of a buying committee acting and logic and reason, opening an email is largely an impulsive, emotional decision.
- #11: Check out the book Steal Like and Artist by Austin Kleon. He offers insight into practical approaches to taking inspiration from the world around us.
- #12: WOULD YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THAT? Would you really? Many people aren’t great at analyzing their own behavior. Start paying attention to what captures your attention via email… keep a “swipe file” with notes about what you liked. Take what you like and make it your own. Keep innovating from there. Experimentation involves risk. According to CEB, buying committees only agree on two things: minimizing risk and saving money. That’s why best practices are attractive. But you also need to be thinking about experimentation & innovation… calculated risks can yield big rewards. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula that works for everyone.
- #14: Renewal Nurture
- #17: Financial services is typically very stodgy. For TD Ameritrade Institutional, Bulldog Solutions created a series of fun assessments that reveal a financial advisor’s “hidden superhero powers.”
- #18: After completing that assessment
- #23: Could we call down on unsubscribers since they show human behavior?
- #27: Uptick in open rates experienced following two lower months.
- #32: Show great video emails (Sungard, etc.) Ex: personalized video.
- #33: Show great video emails (Sungard, etc.) Ex: personalized video.
- #36: Trends in ABM: Simulating peer-to-peer. Personalization techniques & strategies…
- #40: Connecting the dots of complex, omnichannel marketing programs, we push technology to its limits. And then, we take it even further. To fight through the noise, your creative needs to not only be bold, it needs to be smart. Create killer B2B strategies that engage, and ultimately, convert.