Have you ever sent an email and had hardly any leads from it? Or a Facebook ad just failed? A blog that no one reads? Well it may have been because you were one character too long in your title. Or you may not be posting at the right times. Possibly your content might be too short. We have done some research and have a few tips for you!
Digital Display:
Ads
Facebook has become our main focus because 70% of users in the US log in on a daily basis. The second place is Instagram, which sees 59% of its users every day. DirectMail.io has an integration with both platforms, and it appears these guidelines will work well on both as well. When writing a social media ad, it is important to keep the ad short while providing a valuable message. Research has stated that ads with the highest response are posts with 40 characters or less. Explaining your message about what is being offered in simple terms, what benefit it brings to the consumer, and a call to action are all effective ways to create your ad. It is important to be upfront and honest with your expectations for the consumer if prices are involved. Since the response rate is linked to such a low amount of characters, it is impossible to frame your ads to speak to multiple different categories. However, using custom audiences and targeting a specific group of people will help you to find your best results. Running multiple ads with specific targets that contain different language in each ad will yield better results than a long term universal ad.1
Post source tracking links
As mentioned above, 40 character posts receive 86% higher engagement rates. This applies to your source tracking posts as well. You can increase your chances of success with your source tracking post by posting your link with a brief 40 character message. This post should be published at a non-peak time so you are not competing with grandma’s post, their aunt's 5th post about the President, and the 30th MLM post. The best time to post is between 8pm and 1am during the week and anytime on the weekends. Your business page should have a post scheduled once per day within that window. During the campaign, make sure to include your source link in an additional post. Your audience likes to see consistency, and it starts right there with your page’s posts. Lastly, it is important to make sure all of your posts are newsworthy and timely. Look into what is trending, and find something that you can incorporate your post with.
Landing Page:
Domains
A domain is suggested to be 8 characters long. When selecting a landing page domain, try to find something that reflects your business, which is easy to spell, ends in .com and is less than 8 characters. If your domain name is too difficult, no one is going to fight to type in. You have one shot! The title of the page should also be limited to 55 characters. This is more a tip for a constant website that can be searched online but worth noting.3
Presentations:
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Many customers like to include presentation videos. It is not often that a long video is included but we would like to point out that 18 minutes is the maximum presentation suggestion and is the standard used at Ted Talks. Our retention span of time is 10 to 18 minutes.3 To reach 18 minutes that presentation would need to be extremely interesting and still providing to the point details throughout. It is best to stick to a presentation of fewer than 10-15 minutes to ensure retention.
Length
The length can vary. The presentation can vary. The rule here is the bigger the ask the more involved the page should be. Your biggest and most important point needs to be presented first before the need to scroll to ensure those 8 seconds of attention turn into an investment of time. If you are simply looking for their name and email then keep your landing page simple. A picture, call to action and information about you is completely acceptable for this small ask.
If you are asking someone to join you for a webinar that cost $1,000 to attend then it needs to address all their potential concerns. As the ask becomes bigger so will the potential concerns. Each concern or small ask should be address within the landing page on its own. Do not block multiple concerns or asks into one explanation. Use pictures as much as possible which are able to tell their own story and support yours. The point here is to be as clear and concise while capturing the consumer's trust along the way.4
Emails:
Subjects
The ideal email subject is less than 50 characters. Actually only 28 to 39 characters have been shown to yield the highest open percentage on average with 12.2%. For 0.3% less open percentage, we suggest sticking with the 50 character limit for a little breathing room. Your subject should be relevant, identify you, be visually different (such as brackets or including a phone number), related to current events or give a since of urgency and presents a call to action. There is evidence that questions perform well as subjects lines. Do not sell anything within your email subject. Your email subject should provide the expectation of marketing but not be a part of the marketing.5
It seems like a lot of information and rules for 50 characters but it is doable. For example a sale at XYZ store where we are giving away a 20% off coupon in exchange for emails could use the subject line: Want Savings at XYZ? {EXP: 00/00/00}. This is 36 characters long. The subject names the company in a question which calls the individual to an action and has since of urgency with the brackets for added visual effect. It is clear there is an opportunity to save but does not provide the why and how that Marketing would include.
Content
After carefully crafting your email subject be sure to also limit your email content. Emails get the most response rate when it contains 50-125 words. 50 words and 125 word emails receive a 50% response rate. Content with 75-100 words receives a response rate of 51%. 126 to 200 words has a response rate of 48 to 49%. Be very wary of presenting an email with less than 50 words! The response rate drops to 44% and at 10 words 36%.6
The content should contain who you are, what you are offering and your call to action. Greetings and pleasantries are nice when you are sending an email but it is not required when marketing. As long as the content is warm itself there is no need to bog the email down with pleasantries. Be concise and present only useful information. If you find your email is lengthy go back and find words that may not depict the exact information you are passing along. Often we interject words that are not useful simply because it sounded better but it does not add any information. When you potential customer is reading your email in-between the ten other things they need to be doing, there a sense of thankfulness for being to the point which gains you a little more attention.6
A blog has the highest response if it can be read within 7 minutes. We are approaching this limit! Before I lose your concentration, we will wrap this thing up! We have your back here at DM.io and want you to succeed!! I personally hope these were helpful tips! We would love to hear from you! Do you have any tips that you would like to share? Any specific questions you would like answered?
