Want to boost the open and click rates of your “nurturing” emails?  (Who doesn’t?!)

A study of B2B marketing emails by email marketing company SilverPOP – and neatly summarized by Kate Maddox, writing in B2Bonline.com – identified several creative elements which do just that.  The survey analyzed 147 e-mail campaigns sent by 115 B2B marketers, and evaluated creative elements ranging from subject-line content to the design format of e-mails.

The very first place marketers can begin to use creative effectively is in the subject line.  SilverPOP’s study found that e-mails incorporating the company name or brand in the subject line had substantially higher open rates — 32%, compared with 20% for messages without the company name or brand in the subject line.  “This is highly reflective of the fact that the brand or the person it’s from is what matters over the long term,” said Elaine O’Gorman, VP-Strategy at SilverPOP.  “When you treat customers well and they anticipate your content, that drives open rates over the long term.” [Read more...]