Email Marketing Insights for Everyone

The word of the week here at Vero is insight. It’s a marketing buzzword, we know, but seriously, we learned so much this week about writing killer subject lines, mobile email consumption and landing page optimization. We also learned that it’s possible to have an open rate above 100 percent.

Rock on, emails marketers. And don’t forget to share your favorite email marketing stories in the comments or on Twitter.

45 words to avoid in your email marketing subject lines

Christopher Ratcliff from Econsultancy just kills it with this post. He explains which words to stay away from when writing subject lines and why they don’t work. Check out the full post for a lot more tips.

Numbers

Using numbers may help quantify your message, but constant sales and promotion emails can lead to fatigue. Mix it up as much as you can.

Tiresome internet slang

If it hasn’t dated already, chances are somewhere and for someone, it already has: LOL, amazeballs, WTF, derp, FTW, epic fail, epic win, cray-cray, totes, adorbs…

I have so may negative feels towards the above.

Deceptive familiarity

FWD: and RE: the artificial adding of ‘Fwd:’ or ‘Re:’ to trick you into thinking this is part of an ongoing conversation you’re engaged with already only creates distrust.

Inside The New York Times’ Innovation Report

The New York Times understands how to create compelling content — they have been doing that for more than 150 years — but according to a 96-page leaked document known as the “innovation report,” the Times is struggling to distribute and monetize that content.

A digital-first operation requires a completely reorganized workflow. It means integrating digital teams with editors, allowing data and analytics to inform content decisions, and thinking about how content will look and read on mobile as much as desktop and in print.

Taking a look at its competitors, the authors note that it’s this focus on “the dry stuff – tools, workflow and process” that has resulted in BuzzFeed’s explosive growth. Rather than relying on quality journalism to market itself, getting content to lots of people requires baking business interests into the product from the get-go.

This post veers off our normal email beat, but it does a good job of summarizing the incredibly deep and interesting report. We encourage you to give it a read.

The Most Entertaining Guide to Landing Page Optimization You’ll Ever Read

This post actually lives up to the billing. Take the table of content as an accurate prelude to what you’ll get in this massive post from Oli Gardner (Unbounce co-founder) on the Moz blog.

1. First I’ll give you the only rationale you’ll ever need to explain why landing pages are to marketers, what Immodium is to an astronaut with diarrhea. Essential.
2. I’ll prove why context – not content – is king when it comes to conversion.
3. Following that, I will make you fall in love with forms. FYI, it’s really, really hard to make form love a “thing”.
4. Mid way through we’ll sip some Canadian Club, get our Don Draper on, and learn how to write copy like the Mad Men (and Women).
5. “Paint me a pretty picture Johnny!” “Screw you mommy. Design is not just rainbows and unicorns!”
6. Is it greedy to want a second helping when you’re an orphan? Not if you have my name. (It’s Oliver in case you’re confused).
7. Always ask for more when it comes to conversion .And finally, I’ll put my art critic hat on and rip into some landing page examples, both good and bad.

The Email Marketer’s Checklist: 9 Questions to Ask Before You Hit Send

This post is a beast at 2,300 words but it’s loaded with ideas to make your emails smarter and more effective. Have you ever, for example, who your email is really from?

Every email provider allows its users to dictate who emails come from, but who is your email really from? Not only do you need to consider the person sending the email, but you also need to understand exactly what your users will see before they open your message. This includes the “from” address and subject line, but it can also include the first text in the email, or even image alt text. If it could possibly show up in a user’s inbox, it needs to be optimized.

Lots more where that came from.

Email interaction across mobile and desktop

Did you know that more people open emails on mobile devices but far fewer actually click? And are you familiar with email “triage”? This report from Campaign Monitor is loaded with insights about mobile email.

Any great email marketing we missed? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.