The value of a good email subject line

Last month Salon.com switched away from using "Salon Daily Newsletter" as the subject line of its emails. Now, such subjects lines as "Salon Daily: The 10 most compelling on-screen gangsters" show up in my email inbox.

Think about it. Which type of subject line would most likely inspire you to open an email? An unopened and unread email is like no email at all. Worse, in fact. An unopened email is an unwanted email with your name on it. An unwanted email is inbox clutter, and very likely it will soon be deleted.

A good email subject line gives the recipient a reason to open and read the email. From a marketing point of view, that is its main function, but the subject line must also accurately identify the content of the email. People do not like being tricked.

From my spam filter - instant karma

"Instant gratification is the only necessary precondition for instant karma."

So, two to five months is too long to wait for a five-figure monthly income? The following screenshot of a spam email today is appealing to a sense of desperation. The reason I used a screenshot rather than copying and pasting the text is to avoid polluting the search index of this blog with spammy language. The language of spam has a definite flavor and tone to it.



The punchline was the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

"ATTENTION: I send ads for many different marketers for many different income opportunities. I don't have the time or resources to investigate each opportunity to be sure that it is legitimate. Therefore, I don't endorse any of the opportunities. Be sure that you investigate the opportunity before you become involved."

Bit.ly tips and tricks

Bit.ly. is a link-shortening web service.  The idea behind a link shortening service like Bit.ly, and there are several other such services online, is that many links are just too long to be useful.  Long links tend to break when sent by email, they are ugly, and long links are not practical for micro-blogs like Twitter.  Therefore, the usefulness of link shortening services.

The process is simple.  When you create a shortened link through Bit.ly, the new link is a Bit.ly directed link which triggers a many-to-one relational database lookup that finds the actual web URL which is the destination or target link, followed by a re-direct to that site.

So, you have a shortened Bit'ly link and a longer destination link, but there can be multiple shortened Bit'ly links created by several different users, all pointing to the exact same target link URL.  Many-to-one.  Bit.ly counts every time someone clicks on one of its shortened links, it aggregates all the various Bit.ly link clicks to a common destination URL, and it reports both counts to any user with a Bit.ly account who created one of the links.

In the Bit.ly screen shot below, the numbers "0 out of 704" indicates that nobody has clicked on the Bit.ly shortened link that I created, but that 704 people have clicked on other Bit.ly shortened links to the same target that were created by others.  That's the tip.

The trick: With this specific example, I had received a Bit.ly shortened link in an email newsletter from an internet marketer.  After I clicked on the Bit.ly link, I copied the actual URL that I was re-directed to, and then used it to create my own Bit.ly shortened link.  I assume that the seven hundred four clicks to the other Bit'ly links is a fair representation of the internet marketer's newsletter click-through numbers five days after his email newsletter was sent.  That's about all the clicks he is going to get from that newsletter, based upon my experience.

If one wished to speculate about email open rates and click-through rates, one might be able to estimate the size of the internet marketer's email list.  But that is way too tricky for me.  However, it is still my opinion that the link shortening services sell their link popularity data to the search engines and the market researchers, see: Social Media Data Extraction.  It might be a good idea for internet marketers and search optimizers to know and use these services responsibly.

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
Tom Fox on Twitter

Email marketing - newsletter archives

The internal debate about email newsletter archives revolves around the following possibilities:

1. Archived email newsletters are not available online.  The theory, if there is one, is to inspire thoughts of exclusivity and immediacy for the subscriber.  The only way to receive the priceless information contained within the newsletter is to subscribe, and if there is undue delay an opportunity will be lost forever. Exclusivity and immediacy.  But, since creating an online newsletter archive involves extra planning and commitment, the default position may be to have no past issue archive at all.
2. Past issues are available online for subscribers only.  The element of exclusivity is maintained, but the sense of immediacy is eliminated.  If a new issue of a newsletter is published before a visitor decides to subscribe, there is no risk of loss.  The missed newsletter will not be received by email, but it will be available online once the subscription is completed.  If there is a significant collection of past issues available in the archive, access would be an added value enticement for subscription, and it ought to be touted.
3. General public may read online newsletter archive.  This kills both exclusivity and immediacy as sources of motivation for the act of subscribing, but it may provide additional original content for the search engines to index and rank.  Since the search engines are getting harder to fool, the usefulness of this option depends almost entirely upon actually providing unique content worth reading. There are two variations:
   
   
   • Same-domain newsletter archive hosting.
   • Cross-domain past issue hosting.

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
Tom Fox on Twitter