Did you know that there are certain words that can make or break an email campaign? A new study reveals that there are.
Marketing in today’s point-and-click world needs to be black and white about the value of an email message. There’s no better place to do that than the subject line. The subject line is the most important part of an email.
In a recent study from the renowned email marketing agency Alchemy Worx, they found out that there are words that are more likely to prompt an open. Likewise, there are ones that turn readers off.
This study shows that “a single word can make a dramatic difference,” said Dela Quist, founder, and CEO of Alchemy Worx. But Quist and her squad also insist that even their stringent testing methods aren’t enough to determine which words work the best and which fail. They make it a point to show that their methods only allow marketers to experiment with a few subject lines at a time.
In this study, strategists at Alchemy Worx used a specific tool they designed (called Touchstone). This tool searched within a database of more than 20 billion emails to compare and cull the best and worst-performing words in the subject line. The agency looked at the top and bottom words overall, and then sorted based on varying industries. They determined exactly how much better -or worse- these words performed by comparison to average email open rates. This study even examined the best -and worst-performing symbols in the subject lines.
The findings are interesting, to say the least!
Don’t get too excited. The results start to shift dramatically when you start to look at separate industries. The top word for the entertainment industry is “content”. No surprise there. Readers expect an avalanche of content from publishers and media companies.
For retailers, though, the top words are “painting” (18%), “ships” (13%), and “please” (7%). The top word in the travel industry is “about” (26%). The consumer industry’s top word is “wonderful,” coming in at 55%.
Equally as interesting are the worst-performers. Words such as “miss” (-5%), “deals” (-4.4%) and “groovy” at -4.3% did poorly. Strangely, “groovy” was the worst-performing word in the retail environment.
Each business has to determine which is best for itself and its customers. Testing is the only way to truly know the best words for your market. If you want to improve your open rates, pay attention to the finer details. Split test your campaigns until you achieve the best click-through rates and conversions.