Keep Email Subject Lines Short and Use Lots of Links

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 17-Nov-2004 07:48 AM
Email marketers seeking to increase their open and click-through rates would be wise to keep subject lines short and hyperlinks plentiful, according to a new study from EmailLabs.

The email web services provider released an analysis of key variables involved in the delivery of permission emails from more than 650 companies during the first quarter of 2004. The EmailLabs study compared and tested message size, the number of embedded links and the length of the subject line.

The findings: Subject lines shorter than 50 characters in length, as well as an increased number of hyperlinks, led to increased open and click-through rates. Message size did not appear to be a significant factor in boosting rates, although messages in the 20- to 79-kilobyte size range had slightly higher open and click-through rates than messages from 3 to 19 KB.

Subject line lengths were divided into zero to 49 characters and 50+ characters. When analyzed, the zero to 49 character subject lines had an open-rate 12.5 percent higher than the 50+ character subject lines. Click-through rates for the zero to 49 character group were 75 percent higher than the 50+ group.

The differences in open and click-through rates were smaller but still distinct when evaluating the number of hyperlinks contained in the email. Emails with 25 or more links had an open rate of 12 percent higher than those containing fewer than 25 links, and a click-through rate of 29 percent higher than for emails with fewer than 25 links.

"These results support some long-held beliefs among email marketers," said Loren McDonald, EmailLabs' vice president of marketing. "In general, email marketers should limit the length of their subject lines to less than 50 characters and should include as many hyperlinks as possible."

As a former newspaper headline writer, I always believe that shorter and pithier is better. What do you think of the study?

Ruth Ann
Member

Posted 18-Nov-2004 08:44 AM
If you are using email or mail to generate a sales lead in the B2B space, the practice of Direct Marketing and our experience in DM, is that long copy sells and the focus of that copy is the offer. Text is king in DM and it is long. This has been proven over and over again and you, as a reporter, like brand advertising executives, have differing objectives, and, thus, different experiences. Many of the latest "studies" of email do not make any distinction between the objective of the campaign or even the category (B2B vs. B2C)and, unfortunately, grossly misleading. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has a response study that is much more reliable and covers not only email, but other DM media. Hope this helps.

Edwin Setzpfand
Member Council
Member

Posted 19-Nov-2004 06:34 AM
This is about user experience. As a frequent (unfortunate) target of email ads I must say that I do not quite understand the recommendation of the EmailLabs report.

Yes, If the subject line is short, I am more likely to read it, but I disagree on the point of the hyperlinks.

If there are one or two hyperlinks, I may try both, but that's all. If the message of the ad is not clear & understandable from what's in the plain text, I delete the ad on the spot and even don't bother to start digging through the hyperlinks.

There is one issue I miss in Gwynne's posting, but it most probably is not in the report's scope/conclusions either: that is the influence of the number and size and placement of pictures/banners in the ad email.

Any ideas?

Edwin

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 22-Nov-2004 09:04 AM
I just wanted to note that it's only the subject line that should be brief, according to the study. Apparently, the actual length of the email had no bearing. So that doesn't contradict your experience, Ruth Ann.

James Hipkin
Member

Posted 24-Nov-2004 06:03 AM
Why does long copy works better? I asked this question when I worked for a major DM agency in Chicago. The creative director I worked with provided a simple answer that made a lot of common sense. If the consumer is in the market and the basic premise has appeal then they will want more information to make the best decision. If they aren't in the market then it doesn't really matter whether the copy is long or short. They don't see the ad. Hyperlinks work in email marketing for the same reason. Technology and internet usage practices make the execution different but at the essence of the concept it's two-step DM. "Call right now for your free video". With email the hyperlinks facilitate the access to more information. A key part of this is how well constructed the landing page is.

James Hipkin
?
Value-driven Relationship Marketing
415-505-0632
JHipkin@sbcglobal.net

Gordon Cramer
Member

Posted 28-Nov-2004 12:50 PM
A very valid point made by Loren from emailLabs was the issue of administrative links associated with commercial emails. He pointed out that it is often the case that 15 to 20 such links can appear in each email. These are base line overhead for each email and, whilst very important for reasons of compliance, supplementary marketing messages and Best Practice, may not be entirely relevant to the subject of the email.

The real issue then is not the number of links in total but the 'call to action' links related to the subject of the email.

In my experience the location of these CTA links within the body of the email makes a difference; A/B split testing should provide the answer to just where the optimal points are for your email.

In the case of newsletters, and as a matter of personal preference, using the email to present available articles via links has worked consistently well for our company. Open rates in excess of 60% and click through rates,(measured against opened emails) in the 45% + range are commonly achieved. This means that the email itself is short, under 35K, with the added benefit of being able to identify which readers are interested in what topics. We do not present more than 4 links to articles within an email.

With regard to the study, it would be interesting to know whether inhouse or rented lists were used and what proportion were email ads Vs newsletters.

Gordon Cramer
Principal Consultant
Actif Communications
www.actifcommunications.com

Jesse Sandqvist
Member

Posted 03-Dec-2004 01:37 AM
I believe we should not be discussing about how many links are optimal, where to place them, or how long the copy should be. My view is that all these things are irrelevant to some degree. In my view it's a waste of time to make studies if the links should be placed on the top or the bottom of the page.

I believe we should be rather talking about things like how to get permissions, how to target, how to arouse interest, how to motivate people and how to measure email marketing correctly. Much more relevant in my view!

Permission: In email marketing permission is the key. Permission actually means that there is a person that has an interest to hear from your company! People who have given their permission will surely find the right link and click on it. I have given my permission to a couple companies that I trust. I know that they are not going to misuse me. We have a relationship. Every time I get an email from these trusted sources I read what they have to say. For example Lufthansa is one of my very favourites. However, if somebody misuses my trust I will break the relationship, opt-out. Simple as that.

Interest: How Lufthansa established this relationship with me was simple. Firstly, they have clearly communicated me what I sign in for. I agreed and gave my permission. They built on that giving me targeted offers that interest me. I am also a repeated customer and quite satisfied with their products as well, also rather important. The relationship is the key; this is why I am not a big fan of rented lists. There is no exclusive relationship and no interest (we assume there is but we can't know that). This is where the nature of the internet as a free media has turned the tables, now customers find the companies who they want to communicate with not vice versa. They cant be fed messages anymore against their will. Customers know what they want and they will find the messages that interest them.

Targeting: I also believe that what is very important is not to overload the marketing messages with too many messages (and links). Campaign should be ideally created to drive only one objective at a time (I am not talking about newsletters but real campaigns with set business objectives). For examples if a campaign is created to get more test drives for a car, the campaign should only concentrate on driving that single objective nothing more. The more content links there are the more choice and thus spread there will be for the customer to go different paths. I have not seen any statistical studies on this but I have seen it in practice (and learned this the hard way). I do not know why companies still overload their mails with messages. Maybe they tend to think that more links I have, the better results my campaign will have because the people have different interests. Seems like marketers want to offer everyone something...what about talking about segmentation and targeting?

Measuring: This also highlights the problem that I have with measuring the success of email campaigns by click through rates. Email is Direct Marketing but why do we not measure it like DM? Response rates. Offline DM is not measured by who opened the envelope or who read the brochure; they are measured by their ROI. Internet as a channel is the most measurable channel of them all and still it seems very difficult not to talk about only click through rates. Surely it's a part of a campaign but virtually everything that happens in the internet is logged on databases and log files etc. Email marketers should be a bit more intelligent in creating their campaigns so that they can be measured.

Thanks for reading,
Jesse Sandqvist
Responsewave Ltd.

jesse.sandqvist@responsewave.com

Darrin F. Coe
Member

Posted 29-Jan-2005 03:59 PM
I would tend to agree with the analysis from emaillabs. I would only qualify it with "depends on the expectation of your recipient."

when I read the study from email labs what I found very interesting was the notion that recipients are only reading about 50 words of texts in the 4.4 seconds they spend, on average, scanning an email IF they open it.

This supports the growing belief reading is done differently online as opposed to offline. Shorter copy, which is direct and to the point, combined with a strong, direct headline, will most likely lead to better email results.

I recently read a white paper by silverpop which discuussed the coming trends and "rules" in email marketing and there is coming a big change in the fact that the "from" line will become more important than the "subject" line. recipients will open email based on who is sending and then what the subject line says.

It's all about using email to manage the relationship you have with your recipient. Another very important point in the paper was that the size of a company's email list will become less important and how the list is managed and the content sent will become much more important.

Finally, remember that anyone online, whether they are checking email, or surfing, or searching they are looking for information and they want it now and they want it relevant. If they've signed up for your email list or ezine they have an expectation of what they are going to receive and if you don't meet that expectation then they'll begin to migrate and eventually opt OUT.

Darrin F. Coe, MA
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