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Email Copywriting Insights & Tips with Kelly Forst of Aweber
53 Plays4 years ago
Marketers, do you ever wonder if there's a magic word count for your emails? Interested in what the top marketing experts are doing with their subject lines? Our guest has some advice to share with you.
In this episode, we talk with Kelly Forst, a marketing communications specialist with Aweber, one of the world's leading email marketing and automation platforms. Kelly talks through what Aweber discovered after analyzing 1,000 emails from 100 expert email marketers--think Neil Patel, Ann Handley, Content Marketing Institute, among others.
We discuss:
- body copy word count
- subject line character count
- emojis in subject lines
- capitalization in subject lines
- A/B testing
- and more
Want to connect with Kelly online?
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kellyaforst
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyforst/
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About The B2B Mix Show:
The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let’s talk!
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Transcript
Introduction to B2B Mix Show
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Elena and Stacey. In each episode, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your sales and marketing strategy. We'll share what we know along with advice from industry experts who will join us on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hey everybody, it's Stacey Jackson here. And I'm Elena Jackson. We are the co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And in case you still haven't heard, we are also sisters. So Stacey, what are we going to talk about today?
Email Marketing Study Insights
00:00:32
Speaker
Today, we're going to talk about a study of 1000 emails by 100 of the top email marketers.
00:00:42
Speaker
And hopefully we'll be able to share a few insights with our listeners about best practices, what are people doing, and maybe ideas about what they can do. Alaina, what are the biggest questions or comments that you hear when it comes to writing email copies, subject line length, all that jazz?
00:01:04
Speaker
I think one of the biggest things that I hear a lot of people talk about is the length of the emails. People are asking, should they be long? Should they be short? So it'll be interesting to hear what our guest is going to share with us on that because I think that's one of the biggest questions as well as just what kind of subject line should you do? Should it be short? Should you include?
00:01:24
Speaker
emojis or whatever because you want to grab their attention. So I think those are some of the big questions on people's mind because everybody wants a good open rate and you want people to click through. And just for me personally, I don't like long emails because if I open it in as long, I ain't gonna read it most likely. So I prefer the short, simple, sweet, get to the point and that's just my preference. But I think that's something that a lot of people have a question about, you know.
00:01:53
Speaker
Right. And the perception of long email definitely changes when you look on your phone versus your email client on your desktop.
Guest Introduction: Kelly Forst
00:02:01
Speaker
So Alayna, why don't you introduce today's guest to our listeners? I'd be honored to.
00:02:08
Speaker
So Kelly Forst is a marketing communication specialist at Aweber. As a professional content marketer and PR expert at Aweber, one of the world's leading email marketing and automation platforms for bloggers, creators, and small business owners, Kelly is a relationship builder and storyteller at heart. Throughout her career, Kelly has worked with key journalists, influencers, and peers to drive brand awareness and maintain a positive brand reputation.
00:02:34
Speaker
She seeks to educate bloggers, creators, and entrepreneurs about email marketing as a relationship building tool through creating popular blog posts, podcasts, landing pages, and email campaigns. Kelly, welcome to the B2B Mix Show. Thank you so much for having me. So Kelly, before we start talking about copywriting for B2B marketers, entrepreneurs, small business owners, would you like to tell us a little bit more about AWeber?
00:03:00
Speaker
Sure. So AWeber is one of the leading email marketing providers in the world. We build really powerfully simple email marketing software to help our customers, who are traditionally small business owners and entrepreneurs, connect with their customers in really awesome ways and help them use email to build relationships to help them grow their business.
00:03:24
Speaker
So we've been around for over 20 years. The company was founded by our CEO, Tom Kultzer, who created a Webber back in the late 90s when he was working at a computer hardware company selling computer hardware. And he realized that sales prospects were falling through the
00:03:45
Speaker
Cracks due to lack of proper follow-up so he essentially created a webber so that he could automate that that email follow-up process so that sales associates had more time to spend building relationships in person or over the phone.
00:04:02
Speaker
But that's how AWeber was born, and we've continued to grow for 20 years. We really try to work to constantly build really awesome new features and functionality that make email marketing super easy and fun for small business owners who are working every day to make their dreams a reality. So it makes it really fulfilling work to know that we're supporting small business owners and entrepreneurs who are living their passions.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a little bit about a Weber.
Email Length: Short vs Long
00:04:33
Speaker
So you guys know a little bit about email copywriting then so I last year you guys did you analyze like a thousand marketing emails from the top Like 100 email marketers like Neil Patel and Hanley Evernote Content Marketing Institute so a lot of the big players in the game and
00:04:54
Speaker
In that analysis, what did you find regarding word count? Does it matter if it should be a long email, short email? Did you find a magic number or anything like that? It's really hard to give blanket advice with email marketing because everyone's audience is so unique and so different that really the only way to know what works for your unique audience is to try everything and to test a lot.
00:05:21
Speaker
and adjust your strategy as needed. But this study was done so we could really understand what the experts are doing and how small business owners could apply that to their own business. And when it comes to word count, what we found is that emails have roughly 435 words on average, which should take a little more than three minutes to read.
00:05:47
Speaker
But that's the average. We found that more than half of the emails we analyzed contained 300 words or less, so a little more than two minute read time. And that makes sense because people are getting emails more than they ever have in the past. And so it makes sense that you might want to send shorter emails in order to captivate your readers for a short period of time.
00:06:12
Speaker
So it might be a good strategy for doing that, sending short emails for time-starved readers. But on the flip side, a lot of professionals will send longer-form emails. So something like 24% of the emails that we analyze contain 600 or more words.
00:06:32
Speaker
And 11% had 900 or more words. And I think the most prominent of the group would be Anne Hanley. Anne is the Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs, which is a marketing education company. And she sends a biweekly newsletter using a Weber
00:06:50
Speaker
called Total Anarchy to her subscribers every other Sunday. And her newsletters contain more than 1,800 words. And that takes about 14 minutes to read. So that's well above the average. But when Anne was talking to us about why she sends longer form emails, she told us that it's not really the length that that's effective.
00:07:15
Speaker
rather what's effective is that those emails are packed with value for the people on her list. So her goal isn't to set out writing the longest email that she possibly can. Her goal is to write a really fun, valuable letter to every subscriber on her list. So when choosing for yourself,
00:07:39
Speaker
if short emails or long emails are right for you. It really depends on your unique business goals, what you find works with your audience when you test. One thing to keep in mind though, and this came from Andy Crestedina who is
00:07:57
Speaker
a top email marketer and founder of the company Orbit Media. He said that if your goal is awareness, it really doesn't matter if your length is short or long. But if your goal is to drive traffic to your website, then you want to give your recipient the minimum amount of information that you need.
00:08:17
Speaker
in order to get them to click because like I said earlier attention spans are shorter people are getting tons and tons of emails if you really want to drive traffic to your website to you know register for a webinar or an event or download an ebook or something like that then a shorter email with some
00:08:36
Speaker
quick takeaways on why they should click through could be more effective. So it really, again, it just depends on your unique goals, your unique audience. I would recommend testing everything and seeing what works. He makes a good point because
00:08:52
Speaker
If I get a long email, I typically will not even bother reading it. So awareness came, but no click through happens for me if it's a long email. So he makes a really good point that if you just want to drive brand awareness, go ahead and write a long one and it's okay. Have you found that LinkedIn plays a part when it comes to the buyer's journey and what stage that they're at?
00:09:20
Speaker
I think length matters less than the value that you're providing to your subscriber and the content that your subscribers are going to find valuable will differ throughout their buyer journey. So for instance,
00:09:35
Speaker
A longer welcome email might make sense for a couple reasons. Usually your subscribers are the most engaged with you the moment after they subscribe to your email list. That's the time where they've invited you into their inbox. They're eager to hear from you.
00:09:51
Speaker
So taking some time to introduce yourself and set expectations appropriately for what they can expect as a subscriber to your email list can really be a fantastic strategy. On the flip side, if you're trying to get them to register for a webinar or
Optimizing Emails for Mobile
00:10:08
Speaker
event,
00:10:08
Speaker
It may make sense to write a shorter email and really just keep it focused on the call to action that you want them to take. That inherently is kind of based on the buyer's journey because you wouldn't try to get someone to buy or click through early in their buyer journey. You really want to take that time to introduce yourself and have them get to know you before you start making that hard sell.
00:10:35
Speaker
Yes, in a way, it kind of is guided by the where they are on the buyer's journey. But I think length matters less than the value you're providing to them throughout. I wonder if people's perception of what a long email is has changed because of smartphones, like something I'd see on my desktop that is fairly short looking on my phone. If I were to look at it, I'd probably be like, I have to scroll. I'm not going to read this now. Right.
00:11:04
Speaker
Has anyone ever noticed anything about that? Or is that something you guys have studied at all? I know it wasn't part of the blog I read about this study, but.
00:11:13
Speaker
You know, more and more people, I notice the stack goes up every year. More and more people are reading email primarily on their cell phones. So you want to just make sure that the email is optimized for mobile devices. I think as long as the email isn't, you're not having to scroll all over the place in order to read, just really make it optimized for mobile. One thing that's really important to keep in mind
00:11:42
Speaker
for mobile optimization is the subject line. Because mobile devices will cut off the subject line after a certain point. I believe it's after 50 or 60 characters. So that's just something you want to keep in mind on a mobile device in particular.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, that was going to be my next question is about character count or even pixel width or what what what is that you're seeing in the study as far as what these experts are doing to kind of keep it visible to the reader on a on even a mobile phone.
00:12:22
Speaker
Yeah, the study found that subject lines on average have about 44 characters. And that would fit within the parameters for a mobile device.
Subject Line Strategies
00:12:34
Speaker
Typically, like I said earlier, it's 50 to 60 characters depending on the device. And so you don't want to have a long subject line that gets cut off every time because that could be annoying to your reader if they are checking email on their mobile device.
00:12:51
Speaker
But when it comes to subject line length or character count, it goes back to what I said earlier, what works for one audience doesn't necessarily work for another. So my best advice is to test and find what works.
00:13:06
Speaker
And that goes for testing a bunch of different things, whether it's subject line length, whether you're using emojis in a subject line or numbers like five tips for XYZ or even tying it into something seasonal that's happening, like connecting it to a holiday.
00:13:24
Speaker
So one thing that I would suggest testing, and I think it works for both mobile and desktop, is if you really want to make a punch with your subject line, it may be worth testing really, really short subject lines and seeing if they make a big impact on your open rates, because that could get your readers curious and see, hey, what's this about? I want to check this out. Hey, folks, let's take a break to hear about today's sponsor.
00:13:55
Speaker
and we are back. Something also kind of in my mind related to subject lines anyway is where you can use that preview area that some email clients will show. What would you put there versus the subject line? Yeah, I think it's really important that you're not just copying the subject line and putting it in the preheader just because that's another opportunity to get your readers
00:14:22
Speaker
interested in what's in the email itself. So I always recommend connecting the subject line with the preheader. How it's viewed is different on devices, but a general rule of thumb is that the preheader often appears right after the subject line. So it's just another awesome opportunity to give the reader more context for what they can expect. Don't just copy the text that was in your subject line because it's repetitive and you're just losing an opportunity
00:14:52
Speaker
to provide more value there. Right. You also mentioned emojis using those in the subject line. Do you find that more of B to C would use emojis more than B to B? That's kind of what I have in my head, is more B to B maybe won't use emojis as much. Do you find that that kind of hurts them? Should they loosen up and start using emojis?
00:15:19
Speaker
What did you guys find in the study related to that? I think your analysis is right. I think more B2C companies do use emojis than B2B companies. That being said, AWeber is a B2B SaaS company, and we use emojis in our subject lines all the time.
00:15:37
Speaker
But that's also directed by our business, our brand voice, and the tone that we take with our audience. So we really try to be educational, casual, and fun with our audience. That's just our brand voice.
00:15:54
Speaker
and the tone that we like to take with our audience. So I think as long as you're true to your voice, your company voice, and you use copy and tactics that are reflective of your brand, then using emojis are fine. But it really has to be dictated by your brand voice rather than using emojis just to try to stand out differently. Because there's other ways that you can stand out also by using subject lines.
00:16:22
Speaker
What percentage of the emails you analyze used emojis in the subject line?
00:16:27
Speaker
So in the research that we did, almost 7% of the emails that we analyzed contained emojis. Now that study was done in 2019. So I took a look through my personal inbox yesterday and that, keep in mind, I would be considered a consumer. So this would be B2C emails that are using emojis, but I counted almost double that. So 12 or 13 out of 100 of my most recent messages contained emojis.
00:16:57
Speaker
And what I found, and maybe this is just my personal preference, I haven't actually tested this yet, and it's something that I want to test now with Aweber's emails, is I found the ones that sandwiched the subject line between two emojis stood out more to me. So that's something that I'll be testing, but I found that really interesting. I never considered using more than one emoji, but
00:17:21
Speaker
That's something that stood out to me, something that I'd want to be testing for Aweber and the emails that we're sending. Subject lines are important. So we've got another question about subject lines. How does capitalization seem to impact, at least based on what those top 100 email marketers are doing, how does that impact success or at least what they're doing?
00:17:44
Speaker
Sure. I think that when it comes to capitalization, it's really a matter of preference. The research that we did found that 60% of email subjects' lines use sentence case capitalization. So we found that the first word of the sentence is capitalized, and then the rest of the words are lowercase. And that's the majority. That's how Aweber sends emails.
00:18:09
Speaker
Whereas 34% use title case capitalization, so the whole subject line is capital, and only 6% use all lowercase email subject lines. So I really think that that's a matter of preference. I personally think it's more natural to read a subject line that sentence case. But if you're interested in exploring capitalization, I think you can use capitalization to convey tone, voice,
00:18:38
Speaker
and meaning. I think it should be used sparingly because I think when you're scrolling your inbox and you see capital, you know, subject lines where everything is capitalized, it's almost like it's screaming at you. And so if you have something, you know, new and exciting and you want to put that in all caps, just make sure it's being used sparingly. And along those lines, I think
00:19:03
Speaker
It can be really tempting to be witty and clever in subject lines, whether it's using capitalization or emojis or anything really. But unless it truthfully tells your readers what they can expect inside of an email,
00:19:21
Speaker
try to avoid being clickbaity. I think it can be really deceiving to your readers and your subscribers and people just want to know what's inside the email and what can they what they can expect.
Personalization and Testing Best Practices
00:19:34
Speaker
So be truthful. Give your readers
00:19:38
Speaker
focus on the benefit to your reader when you're writing subject lines, why they should care. Don't make them guess what you're sending or use clickbait. It's fine to try to be in site curiosity with them by using shorter lines, but make sure that it directly relates to what's within the email itself.
00:19:58
Speaker
I was just going to mention that in the blog post about the study, there was someone, I can't remember the name of the marketer, who was quoted about why she uses lowercase, all lowercase in her email subject lines to make it seem like it's more personal, like it's from a friend. I thought that was interesting. I had never thought of it that way. But then too, if you abuse it, it could go back to your point about
00:20:22
Speaker
clickbaity or deceptive, but I think use the right way. And with a list that could be really opted in and engaged, that could be an interesting test to do. Yeah, definitely. That would definitely be a good test to do. And I like what she said. Again, I'm not sure who the marketer was. I need to go back and look. But I like what she said about
00:20:44
Speaker
using lowercase in order to convey a friendly tone. I think that's exactly what you want to go for with email marketing in general is write your emails like you're writing to one person. Try to be your authentic self. If you're sitting there composing an email and you know that it's going to a stadium full of people, how you write is going to be inherently different than if you were just writing to a friend. So with that mindset shift,
00:21:14
Speaker
That's probably my biggest takeaway for email marketing.
00:21:21
Speaker
in general. So I love what she said about using lowercase to convey a more friendly, personable tone. And it all comes back to just doing some A-B testing of test your copy link, your subject lines, and other elements of your emails to kind of see what's going to work for you. So when someone is wanting to do the A-B testing and see what will work for them and their audience, do you have some best practices they need to keep in mind when
00:21:51
Speaker
doing that A.B. testing? Yeah, I am so glad you brought up A.B. testing because all of this is it's great to know but you really need to know what works for your audience and really testing and paying attention to those small details is the absolute best way to know what works and it's really the only way to know what works for your audience. It's the only way to get
00:22:14
Speaker
Data-backed proof of the effectiveness of your email marketing and you can test more than just your subject lines You can test send times copy What templates you use call to action buttons colors images the list goes on and on But when you're conducting an a B test, it's it's pretty simple What you want to do is create two or three identical versions of the same email But then change one variable at a time and that's really important
00:22:44
Speaker
because if you change too much at a time, you'll ultimately have no idea what's actually creating the change. So if you want to test subject line length, make sure it's really clear that one is short and one is long. If you want to test images,
00:22:59
Speaker
just include an image in one and an image in the other one and don't change anything else. But when you're looking to set up an A-B test, a few questions that can help guide you before you actually start testing are, you want to ask yourself, why are we testing this variable?
00:23:21
Speaker
What are we hoping to learn from this? And what is the impact this variable has in relation to the performance of this email? Get really creative with your A-B tests. You test any element within an email. Some variables will give you more insight into your subscribers' minds than others, but a couple other best practices you want to keep in mind.
00:23:47
Speaker
Test this with a small percentage of your subscriber list, but make sure that you're using a large enough list to get statistically significant results. So I would say a minimum of a hundred subscribers would probably work the best.
00:24:03
Speaker
your list size that is in order to determine which one actually won out, and use functionality. If you're an Aweber customer, we have functionality that'll let you determine the percentage that you'd like to send variant A and variant B to, and then you can send the winning email to the rest of your subscriber population. So some tools make it really easy for you to test and to understand what works and just keep everything super streamlined. But I definitely think A-B testing
00:24:32
Speaker
Is the best way to know what works with your unique audience and that's a good suggestion and some good tips there for our listeners to follow when they do undertake a be testing with their emails.
Writing Authentic Emails
00:24:48
Speaker
So Kelly, before we get to our Just for Fun question, are there any other tips or advice that you'd like to leave our listeners with? Sure. So I kind of two things. One, I touched on before and that was that
00:25:03
Speaker
People can sometimes, who are new to email marketing, can feel overwhelmed when sitting down to write their very first email to their subscribers. But when you envision that you're writing to one person, when you're writing to a friend or a family member, the task of writing that email not only gets a whole lot easier, but it feels more genuine
00:25:26
Speaker
and authentic to who you are and that just that tiny little mindset shift can really help you kind of find your brand voice when you start writing emails. The other tip is when you start sending content and I love this term because I think it's really easy to remember. It's really stuck with me and has helped guide what we send in our own email marketing. It's
00:25:53
Speaker
never send ROT. And ROT stands for redundant, outdated, or trivial information. So you don't want to send anything that someone could find in a quick Google search, for instance, or something that's outdated or something they just don't care about. So just keep that in mind when you're starting to send emails. I think that's an awesome way to kind of remember and check back what you're sending.
Kelly's Personal Interests
00:26:19
Speaker
And sending emails gets a whole lot more fun when you keep those tips in mind. Yeah, I like the idea of thinking that you're sending it to a family or friend because you'll, like I said, you'll be a little bit more relaxed and be more authentic when you're writing it. Definitely. So we have a last question for you and it's just for fun. So if you weren't working at AWeber, what would your dream job be?
00:26:43
Speaker
Oh man, how wacky do people get with these answers because I could get pretty wacky. Some have gotten wacky. I think my ultimate dream job, and this is pretty out there and would never happen, but I would love to be a Peloton instructor.
00:27:03
Speaker
I love indoor cycling and I just love them. I think what they do is just like the best job in the world. And I think that would be, that's probably my ultimate dream job. Well, maybe we'll see you on the video someday. Oh my gosh.
00:27:19
Speaker
That's the dream.
Connect with Kelly Forst
00:27:23
Speaker
Well, Kelly, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today about email copywriting tips. If listeners want to connect with you online or get in touch, is there a best way for them to do that?
00:27:34
Speaker
Yeah, and thank you so much for having me. This was such a fun conversation. I love talking about this, and I really hope it helps your listeners. But if you want to connect with me online, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Kelly Forst, or find me on Twitter. My handle is KellyAForst.
00:27:52
Speaker
or follow Aweber on social media. You can find them on Twitter at Aweber or check out our blog where we have a lot of awesome content where we get into a lot of what we talked about in a lot more detail. So if you're interested in diving deeper, go to blog.aweber.com and you'll find a lot of awesome stuff.
00:28:13
Speaker
Great. We'll include those links in the show notes. Awesome. All right. So make sure you go follow and connect with Kelly. And if you want to get in touch with me or Stacey, you can hit us up on social. On Twitter, it's at Stacey underscore Jax. That's S-T-A-C-Y underscore J-A-X. And I'm on Twitter at Elena underscore Jax. That's A-L-A-N-N-A underscore J-A-X.
00:28:33
Speaker
And if you're not a Twitter fan, you can always look us up on LinkedIn. And finally, don't forget, you can also leave us a voicemail on the Anchor mobile app or on our anchor.fm show page. See you next time.