We are constantly being told that we should split test. Compare A against B and pick whichever is better to proceed with. Then test the winner - either A or B - against C, and so on, constantly refining until we get the best headline, the best ad, the best email that we can possibly achieve.
But what do you do when the split test yields strange results? This was a situation in which I found myself recently. Let me explain.
As many of my readers know, I send out a weekly email newsletter detailing what I consider to have been the top articles on internet marketing and social media that have been published in the previous week. Like any email marketer, I am constantly trying to think of ways to get more of the recipients to open the emails. And I have written before on this blog about my thoughts as to what I should emphasise in the subject line.
Well, a week or two back, I decided to do a split test. I divided my mailing list into three fairly equal sections, based on the first letter of each recipient's first name, and sent out my newsletter with a different heading to each section.
On the week I did the split test, two of the articles near the top of the newsletter were "102 Things I've Learned About Internet Marketing" by Rebecca Babicz, and "The 12-Month Path to Social Media Success". So I gave the first newsletter the subject line "102 Things You Should Know About Internet Marketing" and the second the subject line "Your 12-Month Plan for Social Media Success". The third newsletter had the subject line "Getting the Best Out of Facebook & Twitter; the Top SEO Apps; & Introducing Pheed" which was a compilation of a number of articles.
My aim was to find out whether a specific subject would entice more people to open the email than a compilation. Now I long ago learned that numbers themselves can be misleading, so I found an excellent and easy to use little calculator to determine the statistical significance of my results. And the outcome was that, although there were differences in the numbers of people who opened each version, these were not statistically significant. So it seems that using a 'one story' subject line or a 'compilation' subject line is equally attractive.
But here's where we get to the strange part. The subject line seemed to have no effect on which articles the recipients clicked on. My thoughts had been that those who opened the '102' newsletter, for example, would have clicked on the '102' story. But, in fact, there were far more who didn't than who did. And that was the same for the '12 month' story. In all three newsletters the most popular article was one about how to customize your Facebook page. And the numbers who opened the '102' and the '12 month' stories were much the same for all three newsletters.
So this leaves me wondering what it was that drew people to open the newsletters? Clearly the majority of the people who opened the '102' newsletter, for example, weren't interested in reading the '102' article. And the same goes for the '12 month' article. Which makes me think that there's a hard core of readers who regularly open the newsletter week after week because they've found it valuable - and who will open it regardless of the headline, while just a few open it because the subject line has caught their eye.
And, of course, this leaves me no nearer to discovering what sort of subject line is going to get more people to open the newsletter. I'm sure split testing is a great idea - but sometimes it just doesn't give you the answers you want!
Showing posts with label newsletters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newsletters. Show all posts
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Thursday, 24 January 2013
What's in a (Newsletter) Headline?
As I've mentioned before, I produce a weekly newsletter which is made up of the most interesting articles I've found on the internet during the previous week - usually around 20 of them. Of course, although all the people I send it to are on my mailing list, not all of them open the newsletter each week. But what puzzles me is why some subject lines seem to work better than others.
Admittedly, some of the fluctuation in opening rates may be due to other factors - people being too busy to read it, or having received a large number of emails that day - but the subject line has got to be a major factor. So I've been trying to see what it is that appeals to my readers.
The newsletters seem to fall into three groups . . . one in which a lot of people open it, one in which a moderate number open it, and one in which not many people open it. But what puzzles me is the seeming crossover between the groups in the actual subject matter.
For example, "How to Succeed . . . and Other Useful Information" is my best scoring headline to date. But "How to Get Your Internet Business Off to a Good Start in 2013!" had the lowest opening rate. And yet, to me, the titles are not dissimilar. Perhaps the fact that the second one came out soon after Christmas had something to do with it, but it certainly seems that "how to succeed" rang more bells than the more specific "get your business off to a good start". So . . . lesson one, the use of the words 'succeed' and 'success' may influence someone to open an email.
In the 'low openers' group was "The power of Twitter & MySpace; Effective Marketing Strategies; Designing a Great Website . . . & more" which is the longest headline I've used. Certainly it's way over the 55 characters which this article says is the most that one should have in a headline. And perhaps that's lesson two.
As far as the subjects covered are concerned, "SEO" appears only in the top scorers, "Pinterest" in the top and middle groups, "Social media marketing" in the middle and bottom, and "Blogging" in all three. Obviously, the subjects in the headline depend on the articles I've found that week. And here it gets more puzzling. I keep a record of the number of clicks on each article within the newsletter . . . and the high scorers don't tally with the seemingly high scoring subject lines . . . apart from articles on Pinterest. "Pinterest For Business Has Arrived! 7 Reasons To Jump Onboard" was one of the most popular items so far, but other than that there seems to be no pattern.
So, what do I think I've learned from this analysis? Perhaps the following:
So may I ask you, whether you subscribe to my newsletter or not, to leave a comment and let me know which subjects in particular would get you to open a newsletter . . . SEO, Pinterest, social media, marketing strategies, content marketing, affiliate marketing . . . or something else entirely.
And if you don't subscribe and would like to, you can sign up by clicking HERE.
Admittedly, some of the fluctuation in opening rates may be due to other factors - people being too busy to read it, or having received a large number of emails that day - but the subject line has got to be a major factor. So I've been trying to see what it is that appeals to my readers.
The newsletters seem to fall into three groups . . . one in which a lot of people open it, one in which a moderate number open it, and one in which not many people open it. But what puzzles me is the seeming crossover between the groups in the actual subject matter.
For example, "How to Succeed . . . and Other Useful Information" is my best scoring headline to date. But "How to Get Your Internet Business Off to a Good Start in 2013!" had the lowest opening rate. And yet, to me, the titles are not dissimilar. Perhaps the fact that the second one came out soon after Christmas had something to do with it, but it certainly seems that "how to succeed" rang more bells than the more specific "get your business off to a good start". So . . . lesson one, the use of the words 'succeed' and 'success' may influence someone to open an email.
In the 'low openers' group was "The power of Twitter & MySpace; Effective Marketing Strategies; Designing a Great Website . . . & more" which is the longest headline I've used. Certainly it's way over the 55 characters which this article says is the most that one should have in a headline. And perhaps that's lesson two.
As far as the subjects covered are concerned, "SEO" appears only in the top scorers, "Pinterest" in the top and middle groups, "Social media marketing" in the middle and bottom, and "Blogging" in all three. Obviously, the subjects in the headline depend on the articles I've found that week. And here it gets more puzzling. I keep a record of the number of clicks on each article within the newsletter . . . and the high scorers don't tally with the seemingly high scoring subject lines . . . apart from articles on Pinterest. "Pinterest For Business Has Arrived! 7 Reasons To Jump Onboard" was one of the most popular items so far, but other than that there seems to be no pattern.
So, what do I think I've learned from this analysis? Perhaps the following:
- 'success' or 'succeed' in a headline may induce people to open the email
- headlines need to be short - long ones may be ignored
- SEO and Pinterest seem to be subjects that people want to read about
- writing headlines is not easy!
So may I ask you, whether you subscribe to my newsletter or not, to leave a comment and let me know which subjects in particular would get you to open a newsletter . . . SEO, Pinterest, social media, marketing strategies, content marketing, affiliate marketing . . . or something else entirely.
And if you don't subscribe and would like to, you can sign up by clicking HERE.
Sunday, 25 November 2012
It's not easy to find time to read everything
There is a huge amount published every week on the internet on the subject of internet marketing, affiliate marketing, using social networks, blogging . . . and the all the paraphernalia of making money online. Some of what's written is interesting, some is informative, some is both interesting and informative.
I read a lot of it and, as you'll know if you read this blog regularly, I like to share things that I find helpful. So about three months ago, I started to compile a weekly newsletter containing twenty of so of the stories and articles that had caught my eye during the past seven days. I offered it to the people who were already on my list and, three months on, more people are reading it each week.
I haven't advertised it at all but the response I've had to it has now prompted me to mention it here in case any of the readers of this blog would like to subscribe to it. It's free and all you need to do is click here and then fill in your name and email address on the form and click 'sign up'.
Recent articles have included:
I read a lot of it and, as you'll know if you read this blog regularly, I like to share things that I find helpful. So about three months ago, I started to compile a weekly newsletter containing twenty of so of the stories and articles that had caught my eye during the past seven days. I offered it to the people who were already on my list and, three months on, more people are reading it each week.
I haven't advertised it at all but the response I've had to it has now prompted me to mention it here in case any of the readers of this blog would like to subscribe to it. It's free and all you need to do is click here and then fill in your name and email address on the form and click 'sign up'.
Recent articles have included:
- 5 easy ideas for increasing blog traffic
- 7 reasons to join Pinterest for Business
- A report on the new Facebook purchase tracking tool
- The secrets behind great business websites
- Best practices for SEO content writing
- Making money with social media
- 6 Insider Secrets to a Winning Affiliate Marketing Program
- How to Build an Online Business From Scratch
- 10 reasons for using videos for marketing
- How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest
- 10 ecommerce turn-offs to avoid
- Why businesses fail online
- How to make your online branding brilliant
Thursday, 5 July 2012
Coming Back for More - the Importance of Recurring Income
If you've been interested in internet marketing for any length of time, you'll be familiar with the concept of back-end products - the idea that you start off by selling new customers something inexpensive in the hope that they will become loyal to you and buy more and more expensive products as time goes on. Because, as the gurus are always quick to point out, you're never going to make a fortune from selling just one-off products at $29 each. This is one reason, of course, why it's important to choose your products wisely (and, if you're an affiliate, to check them out for yourself before trying to sell them). A dissatisfied customer who thought that the $29 product was poor value will not go on to buy a $97 product from the same seller.
Of course, no matter how good your products, there will be some customers who'll only buy once - for whatever reason. Maybe the first product worked so well they've decided they don't need anything else. Or perhaps they've lost interest in the subject. Or it could just be that they don't have the money to spare. So, while it should be possible to continue to get further orders from a list of customers to whom you've sold good value stuff, there are also other sources of recurring income that are worth considering.
The first of these is the newsletter - produced either online or published in the traditional way and sent through the mail. They seem to work best in the fields, such as investment, where things are constantly changing and where people are looking for easy ways to keep up to date. How much is charged for a newsletter varies from publisher to publisher. Some on the subject of internet marketing cost $47 or even $97 a month, so the opportunity for making a good income is high. However, unless you, personally, have all the necessary information at your fingertips and have the time and dedication to write about it for a monthly deadline, producing a newsletter entails the recruitment of experts and writers, who would need to be paid.
A less time-consuming (at least in the long run) and more cost-effective way to achieve a recurring income is to produce a training course of some sort. Internet gurus are fond of pointing out that, while people may balk at paying $50 for a book which will teach them a new skill, they will often be happy to pay $20 a month for a course which is, in effect, that book broken down into bite-sized chunks. Maybe it’s because it makes the information more accessible or because they feel that it’s more interactive but it certainly seems that, if you have the knowledge, it’s much better to write a course than a book.
But better than either of these, to my way of thinking, is the membership site. Certainly it will take some time to set up, and you need to invest in the appropriate software but it could end up running itself on all but the technical side. I’m thinking here of a site that I belong to. It was originally set up in 2002 by a woman in Australia, who wanted to talk about a subject that she was particularly interested in. Over the past ten years it has grown steadily and now has 27,500 members. Admittedly, not all of these are subscribers but, since the best parts of the site can only be accessed by those who have taken out a subscription, many of the twenty seven and a half thousand will be paying the $20 or so a year that it costs to join.
There are three things that I consider to be very clever about this site. First, the subscription is low and therefore affordable for most people. Secondly, quite a bit of the site is accessible to non-paying members who grow to enjoy it and then want to see what it is that they’re missing on the rest of the site. And thirdly, there’s a forum where members can discuss things related to the topic of the site - and, in the ‘chat’ section, anything else that they want to. This has resulted in many people becoming friends (and, yes, I have met up with quite a few face to face in the seven years that I’ve been a member) and so engenders a loyalty to the site. And, since the forum is now the focal point of the site (with, at the time of writing, over 150,000 threads and just under three million posts) it is the members themselves, rather than the site owner, who create the content. Now, I’m not saying that any of this was planned by the site owner at the outset, but if you’re looking for a source of recurring income and you’re interested in a particular subject or hobby, this membership site could provide a worthy model to copy.
Of course, no matter how good your products, there will be some customers who'll only buy once - for whatever reason. Maybe the first product worked so well they've decided they don't need anything else. Or perhaps they've lost interest in the subject. Or it could just be that they don't have the money to spare. So, while it should be possible to continue to get further orders from a list of customers to whom you've sold good value stuff, there are also other sources of recurring income that are worth considering.
The first of these is the newsletter - produced either online or published in the traditional way and sent through the mail. They seem to work best in the fields, such as investment, where things are constantly changing and where people are looking for easy ways to keep up to date. How much is charged for a newsletter varies from publisher to publisher. Some on the subject of internet marketing cost $47 or even $97 a month, so the opportunity for making a good income is high. However, unless you, personally, have all the necessary information at your fingertips and have the time and dedication to write about it for a monthly deadline, producing a newsletter entails the recruitment of experts and writers, who would need to be paid.
A less time-consuming (at least in the long run) and more cost-effective way to achieve a recurring income is to produce a training course of some sort. Internet gurus are fond of pointing out that, while people may balk at paying $50 for a book which will teach them a new skill, they will often be happy to pay $20 a month for a course which is, in effect, that book broken down into bite-sized chunks. Maybe it’s because it makes the information more accessible or because they feel that it’s more interactive but it certainly seems that, if you have the knowledge, it’s much better to write a course than a book.
But better than either of these, to my way of thinking, is the membership site. Certainly it will take some time to set up, and you need to invest in the appropriate software but it could end up running itself on all but the technical side. I’m thinking here of a site that I belong to. It was originally set up in 2002 by a woman in Australia, who wanted to talk about a subject that she was particularly interested in. Over the past ten years it has grown steadily and now has 27,500 members. Admittedly, not all of these are subscribers but, since the best parts of the site can only be accessed by those who have taken out a subscription, many of the twenty seven and a half thousand will be paying the $20 or so a year that it costs to join.
There are three things that I consider to be very clever about this site. First, the subscription is low and therefore affordable for most people. Secondly, quite a bit of the site is accessible to non-paying members who grow to enjoy it and then want to see what it is that they’re missing on the rest of the site. And thirdly, there’s a forum where members can discuss things related to the topic of the site - and, in the ‘chat’ section, anything else that they want to. This has resulted in many people becoming friends (and, yes, I have met up with quite a few face to face in the seven years that I’ve been a member) and so engenders a loyalty to the site. And, since the forum is now the focal point of the site (with, at the time of writing, over 150,000 threads and just under three million posts) it is the members themselves, rather than the site owner, who create the content. Now, I’m not saying that any of this was planned by the site owner at the outset, but if you’re looking for a source of recurring income and you’re interested in a particular subject or hobby, this membership site could provide a worthy model to copy.
Friday, 4 May 2012
Have You Heard of URIBL?
Have you heard of URIBL? Well, maybe you have . . . but I hadn't until last week. It describes itself as "a real time URL blacklist served via DNS to identify unsolicited bulk and commercial email." And that's something, I imagine, that most of us would applaud. People can submit sites for inclusion on the list. This makes it harder for emails from that site or mentioning that site to get through spam filters.
However, I found out about URIBL not because I wanted to report a site . . . but because I discovered I was ON it!!! I was sending a newsletter from my autoresponder to my mailing list, telling them about my previous post on this blog: What do You Need to be a Successful Internet Marketer? When I'd finished writing it, I checked it and clicked the 'spam' button which tells you (based on a number of factors) how likely your email is to get through people's spam filters (bearing in mind, as I've moaned about before, that on Microsoft Outlook, even if you whitelist addresses, they can still get shoved into the spam folder).
Everything about my newsletter was fine . . . everything, that is, except for the fact that I was blacklisted by URIBL. This was the first I'd heard of URIBL. I had no idea what it was . . . and I was worried because, although it didn't seem to mean that my emails wouldn't get through, it reduced their chances. Now, unfortunately, the message about this on my autoresponder was in lower case, and I read it as URLBL. So when I tried Googling it, nothing came up. Not knowing quite what to do about it, I put it on one side until I could ask someone who might know the answer.So I continued with a piece of writing I was doing - and then went to www.tiny.cc to shorten a link I wanted to insert. (If you've never used Tiny, I'd recommend it - you put in your link, click a button, and your new link comes up. If you register (which is free), you can also keep a record of all your abbreviations, so that you can use them again.)
Well, as I say, I went on to Tiny to shorten a link to this blog. And a big red sign came up saying "Check terms and conditions". Which I did. And I found that Tiny won't shorten links to sites that are blacklisted on URIBL. Now it was getting serious! But at least I did now have the correct title of the site and was able to find it. I checked and, yes, I was on their list. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to ask to be removed - you put in your website url and explain why the listing is incorrect. I told them that I sent emails only to people who had given them to me through my opt-in box, that all my emails have an 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom, and that I had never sent an unsolicited email in my life.
I was taken off the list very quickly - although they didn't let me know; I had to go to the site and look. But it left me wondering how on earth they could think that a blog hosted by Blogger was capable of sending out bulk unsolicited email. So I had another look at the website and worked out what must have happened. Under 'List Information' it states: "URIBL lists domains that appear in spam, NOT where they were sent from." Which, to me, seems a very odd way of doing it.
So, why am I going on about this? Well,there is a lesson, I think, to be learned from it. I have to assume that someone on my mailing list received one of my emails in which I gave a link to my blog, and for some reason that person thought it was spam. And this could be because I've not been sending out emails very frequently . . . perhaps every ten days or so, which means it's quite easy for a recipient to forget that he or she actually signed up to the list.
When someone signs in to my opt-in box, to acquire the four books on internet marketing that I'm offering (have you got yours yet?), they are taken to a 'thank you' page where they're told that they will receive an email explaining how to download them, and they're given the address it will come from and asked to whitelist it. But, clearly, that's not enough. We obviously need to keep reminding them who we are - and, while not advocating sending an email a day, perhaps three a week might be best!
I'm left wondering how many sites get wrongly listed . . . and why a site can be blacklisted on a single complaint without, apparently, any investigation. At least they make it easy to get off again.
However, I found out about URIBL not because I wanted to report a site . . . but because I discovered I was ON it!!! I was sending a newsletter from my autoresponder to my mailing list, telling them about my previous post on this blog: What do You Need to be a Successful Internet Marketer? When I'd finished writing it, I checked it and clicked the 'spam' button which tells you (based on a number of factors) how likely your email is to get through people's spam filters (bearing in mind, as I've moaned about before, that on Microsoft Outlook, even if you whitelist addresses, they can still get shoved into the spam folder).
Everything about my newsletter was fine . . . everything, that is, except for the fact that I was blacklisted by URIBL. This was the first I'd heard of URIBL. I had no idea what it was . . . and I was worried because, although it didn't seem to mean that my emails wouldn't get through, it reduced their chances. Now, unfortunately, the message about this on my autoresponder was in lower case, and I read it as URLBL. So when I tried Googling it, nothing came up. Not knowing quite what to do about it, I put it on one side until I could ask someone who might know the answer.So I continued with a piece of writing I was doing - and then went to www.tiny.cc to shorten a link I wanted to insert. (If you've never used Tiny, I'd recommend it - you put in your link, click a button, and your new link comes up. If you register (which is free), you can also keep a record of all your abbreviations, so that you can use them again.)
Well, as I say, I went on to Tiny to shorten a link to this blog. And a big red sign came up saying "Check terms and conditions". Which I did. And I found that Tiny won't shorten links to sites that are blacklisted on URIBL. Now it was getting serious! But at least I did now have the correct title of the site and was able to find it. I checked and, yes, I was on their list. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to ask to be removed - you put in your website url and explain why the listing is incorrect. I told them that I sent emails only to people who had given them to me through my opt-in box, that all my emails have an 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom, and that I had never sent an unsolicited email in my life.
I was taken off the list very quickly - although they didn't let me know; I had to go to the site and look. But it left me wondering how on earth they could think that a blog hosted by Blogger was capable of sending out bulk unsolicited email. So I had another look at the website and worked out what must have happened. Under 'List Information' it states: "URIBL lists domains that appear in spam, NOT where they were sent from." Which, to me, seems a very odd way of doing it.
So, why am I going on about this? Well,there is a lesson, I think, to be learned from it. I have to assume that someone on my mailing list received one of my emails in which I gave a link to my blog, and for some reason that person thought it was spam. And this could be because I've not been sending out emails very frequently . . . perhaps every ten days or so, which means it's quite easy for a recipient to forget that he or she actually signed up to the list.
When someone signs in to my opt-in box, to acquire the four books on internet marketing that I'm offering (have you got yours yet?), they are taken to a 'thank you' page where they're told that they will receive an email explaining how to download them, and they're given the address it will come from and asked to whitelist it. But, clearly, that's not enough. We obviously need to keep reminding them who we are - and, while not advocating sending an email a day, perhaps three a week might be best!
I'm left wondering how many sites get wrongly listed . . . and why a site can be blacklisted on a single complaint without, apparently, any investigation. At least they make it easy to get off again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)