“How did an 18-year old intern beat an Alchemy Worx subject line expert in a split test?”
You might think there isn’t much ‘Naked’ about a run-of-the-mill subject line split test but this one was a little different. Here’s why…
We decided to run a simple subject line split test on our first Naked Email. We weren’t concerned with the content of the subject line, only in the methodology used to construct them. One subject line would be written by a human, the other by a machine.
The Match-up:
In the blue corner representing “Man” we invited our very own Dela Quist, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on subject lines.
In the red corner representing “Machine” was Subject Line Pro, the subject line prediction tool that analyses over 26 billion emails at the touch of a button.
The Rules:
Each party was given the email and background on the user base
The email strategist was only allowed to use their intuition and experience
Subject Line Pro was used by the most inexperienced member of our staff, an 18-year old summer intern. All the intern had to do was start with the expert’s subject line and optimize it using Subject Line Pro until their subject line was predicted to win.
So who won? Man or machine? Expert or novice?
The results: As you can see, Subject Line Pro was the clear winner in this test with a confidence level of 99.7% for opens and 98.9% for clicks.
We will leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the “why” but this highlights the important role data plays in what is often seen as an intuitive discipline. It’s just a bit of a pain having to crunch the numbers every time you want to write a new subject line. That’s where a tool like Touchstone is such a valuable addition to the subject line writer’s armory.
Our Head of Copywriting, Dan Hamilton, commented: “It’s removing the subjectivity from subject lines. The data will always give a straightforward factual answer and no matter how good a writer you are, you need to work with the data. I’ve been using Subject Line Pro for some time and this really confirms my view that it is an indispensable tool for putting subjective judgments aside and gaining a better understanding of what makes a winning subject line.”
