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Email quick-fixes don’t cut it

List subscribers spend less than 20 seconds determining which emails in their inbox deserve a closer look. To grab subscribers’ limited attention, most marketers focus on the quick fix: the compelling subject line or the catchy offer.

While these elements are easy to test, subscriber motivation paints a different picture of what matters, according to a recent study from Forrester. As a result, marketers’ fixation on concrete elements often backfires, resulting in stagnant or even decreased open rates.

If subscribers don’t find the overall email communication relevant to their needs and interests, they won’t open individual messages. While it’s still important to crack the basics like a compelling offer and well-timed delivery, email marketers need to take things a step further to boost open rates.

The best email marketers use multiple outlets to uncover subscriber desires: preference centres, surveys embedded within email messages, and behavioural targeting are all ways to get to the root of motivations.

Subscribers, especially younger ones, increasingly want marketing and products customised to their preferences. Email technology is remarkable in that marketers can dynamically generate subject lines, message formats, content, and images based on any number of factors. But in order to do so, marketers need to employ resources to develop specific content for segmented audiences.

While all marketers need to tune messages to interests, the amount of email customisation varies by brand and industry. Forrester splits the factors that influence email opens into two groups — creative and standard factors.

Creative factors have to do with the emotional attachment subscribers have to a brand or marketing message. Marketers can get a handle on these motivations by understanding subscribers’ psychology — by plainly asking what drives subscribers to make decisions and by monitoring their behaviour in email, on the website.

Factors outside of subscribers’ emotional sphere (‘standard’ factors) are the ones where marketers can exert stricter control and employ quick fixes to a campaign. While they’re the most straightforward aspects of a message for the marketer to manage and test, subscribers underplay the influence of factors like subject line, message timing, and indiscriminate offers (e.g., buy one, get one free or 10% off for all subscribers).