“Marketo Summit – Free Beer, Gold for Everyone!”

There are all sorts of conclusions one might draw from these results – most notably, when and how to use humor in business campaigns – but here’s the factor that struck me most: the word “Free”.

No-one uses “free” in subject lines any more, do they? Well, apparently, they do. And though it’s only one data point, I found it somewhat revelatory that the ReachForce campaign generated an open rate well above industry standards, even using a term that by all accounts is supposed to guarantee your campaign ends up being caught in spam filters.

Other experts have seen similar results. In his post “7 Email Subject Line Myths Exploded,” email consultant Tim Watson writes that spam trigger words like “free” aren’t the problem they once were, because whereas in years past email was largely filtered on content, now the biggest variable is reputation. In other words, Watson contends, content will only cause you problems if you’ve received spam complaints in the past (or worse yet, have been blacklisted) and your email reputation is weak as a result.

In a related post, inbound marketing software provider Hubspot reported on an A/B test using the word “Free” and concluded that the difference, at least in terms of deliverability, was statistically insignificant. However, Hubspot also noted that click-through rates increased when the word “free” was excluded. It’s worth pointing out that Hubspot’s test was less than ideal because, in the second subject line, they substituted the word “free” with the word “SEO.” A cleaner test would have been to simply exclude the term altogether, for example:

[Free Guide] How to Master Internal Link Building for SEO
[Guide] How to Master Internal Link Building for SEO

since, by using [SEO Guide] as their test, Hubspot introduced another variable – namely, the word “SEO”.

But, again, anecdotally this also suggests that, at the very least, “free” has nowhere near the killing effect that B2B marketers of recent vintage have been trained to believe.

So, what to do? Well, test, of course. At our agency, we’ll be weaving tests of the word “free” into multiple client campaigns over the coming weeks and months. If the findings are significant, I’ll report back here in the comments. In the meantime, if you’ve run similar tests of late, please share your observations.

A further aside – if it’s indeed true that “free” isn’t the spam trigger it once was, this also proves that no email marketing best practice is true forever. Way back in 2007, I wrote a post (“The Myth of Why You Shouldn’t Use “Free” in Subject Lines”) on this same topic, and reported that a recent test (back then) showed the term had increased open rates by 45%. In subsequent years, however, similar tests showed “free” to have a consistently negative effect. Now, apparently, the pendulum has swung again.

As a demand generation marketer, however, I have an issue when brand marketers start to muscle in our turf. I’ve confessed previously in this space to being a branding cynic, but if you want to argue that branding (however you define it) and building awareness for that brand are necessary foundations for effective demand gen, that’s OK. (I don’t agree, but we can still be friends.)

Just don’t start pretending that awareness-building and demand generation are the same thing. They’re not, and here’s the simple reason why: Demand generation, by definition, generates measurable demand for your product. It doesn’t simply remind people you exist, or give potential buyers warm, fuzzy feelings about your brand. Well, OK, it might do those things, but that’s not its purpose. In fact, to the extent branding is even a minor goal of your demand gen strategy, you’re likely to fail at both.

Over at TechCrunch, writer Josh Constine recently penned an intriguing article about the potential for social media platforms eating into Google’s near monopoly on search advertising. Josh’s argument is that search engines are no longer the only channels to offer keyword advertising, and that Twitter and Facebook in particular are now enabling advertisers to reach buyers in the act of expressing interest in a particular topic, trend or product. It’s a compelling case, but then Josh goes further:

“A solid model for understanding Web advertising is the purchase intent funnel. At the wide top of the funnel is demand generation – raising awareness about a product and engendering the brand to a customer. Demand generation is more about ad views and changing your perceptions than clicks and driving immediate action.”

Wait, what? He continues:

“At the narrow bottom of the funnel is demand fulfillment – convincing someone ready to make a purchase of what specifically they should buy.”

OK, I confess: “demand fulfillment” is news to me. And as a buzzword, it’s kind of catchy. It’s also complete rubbish.

All demand generation is about measurable response. Demand generation is about getting someone to do something. Otherwise, it’s not demand generation, it’s just brand-building.

So, why does this matter? Can one man’s demand generation be another’s awareness advertising? Can’t we all just get along?

Sure. But I’d argue that it’s confusing at best, and misleading at worst, to pretend that demand generation is something it’s not, and never has been. Because I work for a demand generation agency (a real one), I don’t have to explain to clients that we don’t do branding. Everything we do for our clients is measurable, period. (Remember, branding is what your agency calls your marketing program when they can’t measure it.)

And it’s ludicrous (in my view) to suggest that “engendering a brand” is a necessary part of the demand generation funnel, let alone the foundation for a demand generation strategy. There are plenty of things you can do to build a relationship with prospective buyers when they’re not quite ready to buy. You can engage in thought leadership through social media, or propagate early stage content into the marketplace. However, when we create such programs for our clients, we don’t do it to generate awareness. Our aim is to capture those early stage buyers, to harness their interest in the topic/issue/challenge/problem that our client’s product or service addresses, to get them to take action (download, click, subscribe) and then to engage them in an ongoing dialogue until they’re ready to buy.

Call it lead nurturing. Call it content marketing. Call it demand generation. Just don’t call it branding.

To their credit, Avalara’s email header takes up very little vertical space, so more valuable selling copy doesn’t get pushed down the page. An image of the offer appears in the sidebar, making that offer more “real” and tangible. Unfortunately, the main body copy lets down the side completely.

From top to bottom, the copy reads more like an executive summary or abstract. You’ll need to wade through two-and-a-half paragraphs of facts and figures about sales tax before you even know what the offer is (a white paper) and even then there’s no clear call to action or anything remotely action-oriented. Even when the writer attempts to communicate why the content would be of value, it’s communicated in first person terms (“we will show how your business …”) versus a more effective second person (“you’ll learn how …”)

In stark contrast, the email from ExactTarget wastes no time in communicating exactly what the offer is, and why the reader will find it valuable. Note the sub-head (“Forrester Research, Inc. defines 4 tips …”) that instantly delivers tangible value in specific, quantifiable terms. The bulleted points are all clear, compelling learning benefits – what the reader will gain by downloading the report – and the fact they’re bullets makes them easy to scan at a glance, whereas Avalara’s email is just a mass of text. Use of the second person (“You’ll also learn how …”) drives home the point, and a clear call to action (“Download Now”) closes the deal.

If I were being picky, I’d change only a couple of things about the ExactTarget campaign. First, the header is too large by half. I’d lose the ExactTarget logo and reduce the mobile phone icon (or replace it with something that better represents the offer.) I’d also make the headline HTML – in its current form it disappears entirely unless I’ve set Outlook to download images automatically. And lastly, I’d add a text link (“Download your copy now”) in the very last paragraph for the same reason – with images turned off, there is no visible call to action for the reader to click.

Using email to promote content? Remember these tips:

1. Keep email headers short to avoid pushing valuable selling copy down the page.
2. Feature an image of the offer to make it more tangible.
3. Communicate learning benefits, not facts.
4. Use bullets in body copy to make key selling points stand out at a glance.
5. Use both text and button-style calls to action.

For more tips on email creative, download a copy of the white paper: “Top 10 B2B Email Marketing Mistakes.”

Of course, the long-term benefits of testing subject lines far outweigh the risks. Yes, it’s one more step in the campaign process, but if you make testing a standard part of the routine, the extra time to develop test copy and set up the appropriate list splits is inconsequential. And yes, a single test message may not outperform the control, but the amount of risk depends on what you’re testing. Small, simple, isolated changes to your control message, especially as part of a systematic testing program deployed over time, render that risk fairly minimal.

The key benefit of a subject line test is not the lesson learned from one campaign. It’s the cumulative learning from systematic testing over time. If you’re testing correctly (see below), the difference in performance between control and test messages for any one campaign will likely be small anyway. But over time, those small differences add up. Over the course of several campaigns, learning how your particular audience responds to different structure, topics, key terms – and then applying those lessons to each successive campaign, can increase email response rates substantially.

Furthermore, NOT testing subject lines is dangerous for one simple reason – you’ll never know what impact your chosen subject line had on the campaign. Let’s say, for example, that your campaign tanks (never happens, I know.) Was it because you chose the wrong message? If you used only one subject line, you’ll never know. But if you test subject lines, you’ll at least have a stronger sense of whether message, or offer, or audience, or list quality was at fault.

So you’re convinced, right? Here then are a few key tips for how to implement an effective subject line test:

1. Don’t try to do too much. Test only modest changes so that the test results mean something. If the two subject lines are completely different, no matter what the results, you’ll have no idea why one performed better than the other. Optimally, keep the structure consistent and vary just a word or a phrase. If you test consistently, you’ll be able to cover the bases and test most things over time.

2. Decide what it is you want to learn. Would it be most useful to know which of two key benefits matters most to your audience? Or which of two topics is more of a hot button issue? Or whether people respond better to a “white paper” vs. an “ebook”? Give testing a purpose rather than simply selecting two subject lines randomly to run head-to-head.

3. To minimize risk, follow a few basic principles. Keep in mind there are no hard-and-fast rules to subject line structure that work 100% of the time. In fact, if you tested 100 subject lines with every broadcast, I’ll guarantee that at least one of the top performers would break a few “best practices” along the way. However, for most B2B marketers, testing just two subject lines is the norm because list size won’t accommodate anything much more. With that in mind, it’s generally a good idea to:

- always include the offer (White Paper, Webinar, Ebook)
- include at least one key benefit (cut costs, save time, increase revenue)
- use action-oriented language (Learn, Register, Discover, Download, Act Now)
- keep the subject line under 40 characters if possible (roughly equivalent to the amount of text most recipients will see in their preview pane or on their mobile device before opening the email)

4. You don’t HAVE to test subject lines 50/50. Sure, it makes things easier on the reporting end, but if you have a control message or structure that performs consistently, and your list size is large enough that you can afford a smaller sample size, it might make more sense (and be less risky) to introduce your test message to only 25% of the list.

How often do you test subject lines? Take our poll below.

For more tips on B2B email marketing, download our free white paper: “Top 10 B2B Email Marketing Mistakes.”

My response:

There are merits to this approach, though it’s far from the only way to implement “traffic control” within your overall lead nurturing program. Most marketing automation systems make it relatively easy to control email frequency and to establish priorities when multiple campaigns get scheduled in too small a window. From a planning perspective, going the day-of-the-week route certainly makes it easy to control your editorial calendar. However, I’d advise caution:

1. Certain days of the week may generate better email response. One recent study claims that Fridays and Wednesdays are the worst days to send email (as measured by click-through rate), Mondays and Tuesdays are better, and weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) are the best. That means if you were to assign, let’s say: Webinar invitations to Wednesdays, you may be dooming those campaigns to a much lower response on average than if you were to schedule them in a more flexible, holistic way.

2. A day-of-the-week-based approach is a better fit for what we call “ongoing” nurturing, or a keep-in-touch strategy where timing is less critical. If a prospect has been in your database for 6 months and you’re simply keeping him or her “warm,” it matters less whether he or she waits 3 days or 7 days between emails. However, a calendar approach is decidedly NOT a good fit for initial lead response or autoresponder campaigns, for which it’s imperative you strike while the iron is hot.

For autoresponder campaigns, it’s much more essential to have a tightly defined email frequency, for example: Email #1 – Day 0 (Immediate), Email #2 – Day 3, Email #3 – Day 7, and so on. If someone becomes a lead on a Friday, you don’t want that person to wait 6 days for a response, and 7 days for the next touch, which is what will happen if you’ve decided that nurturing emails only go out on Thursdays. When someone raises their hand and expresses interest in your product, responding immediately to that interest has proven to have a dramatic impact on the rate at which that inquiry converts into a qualified lead. Anything less and you run the very real risk that the prospect will be distracted and focus his or her attention elsewhere, perhaps on your competition.

So, in sum: a day-of-the-week approach is fine for ongoing nurturing, and can make planning easier. However, it’s also relatively inflexible and there are more sophisticated (albeit more complex) ways to go about controlling email frequency. Lastly, a day-of-the-week approach is a very poor fit for autoresponder campaigns where immediate and sustained response is the key to success. If you absolutely must confine certain emails to certain days of the week, it would be a good idea to have that system only “kick in” once a lead has been through an initial touch campaign.

For more tips on lead nurturing, download a copy of our white paper: “Top 10 Tips For Lead Nurturing Success: How to Get the Most From Your Lead Nurturing Program, and How to Plan for Success if You’re Just Getting Started.”

Secondly, reps will chase those leads that they deem to show the highest potential, and delay follow-up to (or ignore altogether) those leads that experience tells them aren’t as likely to yield short-term deals. Trade show badge scans and white paper downloads are prime examples of leads usually relegated to the back of the follow up queue.

One surefire method of making sure that leads are responded to promptly, effectively, and systematically, is to incorporate a program of automated email response (sometimes known as an “autoresponder” campaign.) Here are 3 keys to crafting a successful autoresponder strategy:

1. Don’t try to do too much. In most cases, the goal of an effective autoresponder program isn’t to convince the prospect to buy your product, or even to persuade him or her to request contact from sales. A good autoresponder simply generates response, any response, and gives the prospect another opportunity to request additional information. By doing so, the program collects additional information about each prospect, and allows your sales reps to prioritize follow-up to those individuals with the greatest or most immediate interest.

2. Incorporate multiple touches. By all means respond as quickly as possible when a lead enters the system, but then follow that initial touch with one or two additional emails over the next few days. A good rule of thumb is 0-3-7: a first email sent immediately, a second sent after 3 days (giving the prospect time to review the content he/she viewed or downloaded, perhaps), and a third sent after a week (as a reminder). There’s no concrete rule for frequency, however, so adapt and test the intervals based on your specific audience, lead source, and sales process.

3. Integrate both early- and late-stage offers. If you attempt to short cut the sales process by offering every new prospect a free trial, for example, you’ll identify the hot leads sure enough, but at the expense of early-stage prospects who may not be ready to take that big a step. Offers that require less of a commitment – a Webinar, or video, or case study – can help move that prospect one small step further along the sales process (and identify him or her as a candidate for further nurturing.)

This article originally appeared as a guest post on Optify’s Lead Generation Software Blog.

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