eROI Days Email Agency

We (eROI) just released our Q1′06 Email Statistics & Survey Study. During Q1′06, we saw dramatically different statistics when compared to Q4’05. For example, Q1 2006 gave us a huge uptake in weekend activity as well a massive upswing in open and click rates with increases of 40% and 60%, respectively.

It is especially interesting to see a large increase in opens and clicks during the weekend. Much of this activity can be attributed to the massive drop off in activities after the holidays, giving people more time to browse online and open and follow up on email. However, this quarter has presented us with some unexplained reactions. Normally, we see higher open and click rates on days with lower volume, such as on Sunday in the chart below, but at the same time we see the highest percentage of open rates take place on the day with the most email sent. What does this mean? Good subject lines and good creative get good results, bad creative and bad subject lines perform poorly. Don’t forget to download our detailed eROI Q1′06 Email Report.

If you’d like to get some different perspectives on this study, go to articles on:
MarketingVox
MediaBuyerPlanner

Subject Line Research: Response Goes Down As the Characters Go Up

The issue of subject line length is something that gets debated endlessly around the marketing water cooler. Most people know that anything longer than 55 characters (and, just a reminder, the spaces do count!) will get cut off. And many have heard the maxim that 35 is really a better number to aim for. But, does anyone know how the length of the subject line actually affects response?

Response rate (as measured by clicks) goes down dramatically when the subject line is longer than 50 characters.

Click-through rates for subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 percent higher than for those with 50 or more.

What about open rates? While the difference wasn’t as dramatic, we found that subject lines with 49 or fewer characters had open rates 12.5 percent higher than for those with 50 or more.

Testing your subject lines on your list is the only way to know what will work and what won’t. But, this research clearly shows that, in fact, brevity is the better part of valor.

I promise to add to this blog entry with the source of this study.