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A client in Denver told me my email subject lines were 'too clever to click' and I've been rewriting them ever since
I ran a promo for a small outdoor gear client back in March and bragged about my open rate, 38 percent, until she forwarded me the click data: under 1 percent. She said my subjects were cute wordplay that made people smile and move on without ever opening the thing. So I dropped the puns and started writing them like a text from a friend, plain and boring on purpose. Last month that same list hit 41 percent opens and 6.2 percent clicks on a $1,400 campaign, and I've stopped trying to be funny in subject lines. Has anyone else had a client call out their copy like that?
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phoenix2145d ago
Wondering if the puns were really the problem, or if it was something else in the mix. I had a similar thing happen with a coffee roaster where my playful subjects got decent opens but dead clicks, and it turned out the preview text and the first line of the email were the real letdown, not the subject. Changing those fixed the clicks while I kept writing fun subjects. Your numbers did jump a lot though, so maybe your list just responds better to plain talk. I'd be careful about swearing off humor forever based on one client and one campaign, since funny can work great when the offer and the audience line up.
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