From the Desk of Ken Silberling:
I’m sure I’m not alone in the fact that I receive around 100 e-mails per day. Some of these get my attention, some I delete immediately; and in some cases, people are creating interesting and valuable content.

As an e-mail marketer myself, I am always on the lookout for what gets my attention and why. Two things happened today which led me to an idea. Hopefully, this has inspired some more interesting and valuable content.  I got an e-mail this morning from personal trainer Billy Carney with the headline “Why I Think Santa is a Jerk-Off”.  I had met Billy at a Boca Chamber Event and have been on his mailing list. Personally, I think he’s a bit over the top, but I admire his effort and this one was so outrageous I clicked through and read it.

Two minutes later, I got an internal e-mail from Jessica, our Marketing Specialist asking for a headline for a promotional e-mail to send to 400 brokers. She suggested “Prime Warehouse With I-95 Frontage” and asked me what  I look for in a headline.  After thinking about it, the first thing I look for in a headline is an excuse to immediately delete the e-mail.  That often includes those with headlines like “Prime Warehouse With I-95 Frontage”.  Of course if a broker was looking for 35,000 sq. ft., we would certainly get his or her attention, so it’s actually a pretty good headline.

But what could I do for a headline that doesn’t trash Santa but gets more people to open my e-mail.  I had Jessica split up the group into 2 sets of 200 brokers. One group got the e-mail with the standard headline.  The second group got one with a headline “Don’t Delete Me”.

The results: the standard headline got an open rate of 17.5 percent which is pretty good and we have a good following within the brokerage community.  The “Don’t Delete Me” group had an open rate of 32.5 percent, so even a moderately clever headline increased the open rate by 86 percent.

So what did we learn ? Probably that I shouldn’t be giving away our e-mail secrets.  But aside from that, a key to successful e-mail marketing is getting past that immediate urge to delete.  That can be accomplished through a clever headline, an offer or though compelling content.  At Danburg Management, we will continue to provide some leadership in that area.  If you’ve made it to this point congratulations to us!  If you didn’t, you’re probably a jerk-off anyway.