marketing on S Anand

I tested the best ways to mail people

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 06:01:25 +0000

I emailed My Year in 2021 to ~2,700 people. It had 3 experiments.

Do friends open my mail more than strangers?

I split the list into 2 groups:

My contacts: ~1,000 people I knew (I’ve mailed them)
Strangers: ~1,700 people I didn’t know (I’ve never mailed them)

My guess: strangers would open the mail 30% less often.

Reality: They opened it 40% less. 50% of my contacts opened the mail, vs only 28% of strangers.

Are the first and last links most clicked?

I sent 2 versions of the email to my contacts. The order of links was different.

Book reviews did 30% worse at #6 than #1 (62% down to 43%)
PyCon talk did 67% worse at #4 than #1 (10.4% down to 3.4%)
Landmark course did 7% worse at #4 than #2 (20.7% down to 19.2%)
write more about did 100% worse at #4 than #2 (4.4% down to 0%)
Tools for Data Science did 39% better at #2 than #6 (17% down to 10%)
Pranayama did 62% better at #5 than #3 (3.4% up to 5.5%)

My guess: the first and last links would be clicked 20% more often than those in the middle.

Reality: The links higher up were clicked more often 5/6 times. Click rates drop but don’t climb up at the end.

Do provocative subject lines increase open rates?

I sent 2 versions of the email to my contacts. The subject lines were different.

Bland: “My year in 2021”
Provocative: “Where I failed in 2021”

My guess: the provocative title will have 2X the open rate of the bland one.

Reality: The open rates were about the same (49% for provocative, 51% for bland). Either the second title was not provocative enough, or the bland was interesting enough. I need to re-run this experiment.

Learnings

I learned 3 things.

Strangers open my mails less than I thought. Make more friends 🙂
People scan emails top-down (not top-down, then bottom-up - like I do) and click on top links. Move the main link first.
I’m no good at creating high-contrast variations in content. Take help.

London Marketing Soiree

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I met Leonard Payne, The Priest, Andrea Casalotti and Scott Caplan at the London Marketing Soiree. Quite a diverse bunch of people. Leonard quoted Seth Godin on something neither he nor I will never forget.

They say, if a website is well designed, people will find what they want. That’s not true. Think of the visitors as monkeys, wearing a ‘Big Red Fez’, going itchy on the keyboard. What’s the one thing on the monkey’s mind?

Where’s the banana!?

Comments

S Anand 13 Jul 2005 10:02 am: See more at GeekDinner.

Amul ad hits

Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Amul ad hits.

Comments

BINDU NAIR 8 Dec 2011 12:50 pm: LOVE THE JINGLE OF THE AD UTTERLY BUTTERLY DELICIOUS AMUL

Presidential letters to the editor

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 12:00:00 +0000

Letters to the Editor. Except that they’re a marketing campaign. By the President, no less. via Scripting News

Indian TV commercial storyboards

Thu, 03 Oct 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Indian TV commercial storyboards. The plots of several TV ads, in pictures and words. via Someplace Simple

Where do you want to go today

Fri, 21 Jun 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Where do you want to go today?