2006 Email Marketing Trends

With just a few more months to go before the long awaited launch of Wiliam’s new version of Sitecast, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss some of the most common sense, but frequently ignored principles of email marketing.

According to the Email Marketing Metrics report published by US based email list management service MailerMailer in July of this year, subject line length & content has a great impact on the open rate of an HTML email.  Emails with subjects of 35 characters or less were 7.09% more likely to be opened than emails with subjects that were over 35 characters long.

Additionally, of course, with advances in spam detection technology & users heightened awareness and annoyance of email spam, the content of email subjects (and email text, for that matter) also greatly impacts on the success of an email campaign; exclamation marks, dollar signs and words in all caps should generally be avoided.

Taught in previous roles that Tuesday and Wednesday mornings were by far the best times to send a campaign, I have been surprised in recent months to discover that Monday has emerged as the day of the week with the highest read rate, and in fact Wednesday is now considered one of the worst days to send a campaign.   Additionally, the weekend is also proving a successful time to send emails, with more people checking their emails from home regularly, sending campaigns on weekends allows users the time to read & absorb your message, as they are not bogged down with working week chaos.

Finally, as email technology becomes more and more sophisticated, allowing traditional email blasts to be converted into rapport developing personal messages, thanks email personalization, statistics are becoming more and more clear that personalized emails are by far the most intelligent way to get your message across.  In fact, emails with both the subject line & message personalized can enjoy read rates on average of 28.03% in comparison to 22.20% for emails where only the message is personalized.  

So what are the lessons we can learn from this?  Get your email campaigns out early in the week, or wait & schedule your campaign for Saturday morning.   If you aren’t already, arrange for the subscriber form on your website to capture more than just users’ email addresses.  Ideally, you should also capture first name & the state (and country – if your website’s audience is international) to allow you to send personalized & demographically targeted campaigns. And most importantly, think critically about the message you are sending to your subscribers- ensure that it is consistent, informative and relevant to them.