Setting up triggered emails is an easy way to ensure your communications are relevant and timely as they’re based on your subscriber’s recent interactions with your brand, product or service. For instance, there may be simple actions or changes in customer behaviour that you can use as the basis for new triggered activity that complements your existing messaging.

“I have heard that ISPs are beginning to base reputation scores on engagement – how will this affect my deliverability?”

The first response I give to anyone who asks me this question is: “Says Who?” Swiftly followed by: “You have nothing to worry about.”

An Alchemy Worx’s study of over 600 subject lines across 200 million messages showed an unexpected relationship between click-to-open rates and subject line length, suggesting very strongly that past subject line analysis may have led email marketers seriously astray.

An email address is at the heart of people’s ID and makes possible a massive range of our daily interactions – with each other, with brands and shops, with government and employers.

Popular opinion states that an unopened email means your subscriber is disengaged and uninterested in making a purchase – we disagree. Unopened email communications have a tangible impact on brand awareness and can lead to purchase activity across all channels.

The colon (Test Worx: How many clicks is an image worth?) generated a higher level of opens, but a lower level of clicks.

In issues of Email-Worx, we’ve used a variety of words and symbols – colons, dashes, plus signs etc – to divide the propositions within our subject lines. In analysing the performance of these different separators, we’ve discovered that there’s more to punctuation than meets the eye…

Subject lines are one of the first things your subscribers see when they go into their inbox and have a proven and measurable impact on whether they go on to open, click and convert. Which is why so many email marketers spend so much time AB testing their SLs.

As you can see from the chart below, subject line B “Incentivise your email program without devaluing your brand” went into the lead almost immediately, and after 15 days had generated 32% more unique opens and 20% more unique clicks than subject line A “Incentive Programs: Your guide to giving”.