Express Value, Avoid ‘Trigger’ Words and Include Numbers to Increase Open Rates

by Media

Emails with video indicated in the subject line generate the highest engagement rates. But only around 8% of the emails in a recent study from GetResponse contained links to videos. “For now, the best workaround is to use an image (maybe even a GIF) that looks like a video player and links to your page,” they suggest. “That way, you’ll boost your click-throughs and enhance your contacts’ experience as they’ll watch the content in their default browser or video player.”

What can we do to improve engagement and open rates of our email? Let us count some content-oriented ways here.

1. Don’t use all caps anywhere in your email or its subject line, and try to stay away from exclamation points. Using all caps in your subject line might get the recipients’ attention, but probably not in a good way. It can be annoying to people. Much better to personalize, establish relevancy, and use catchy and pleasing language. As for exclamation points, when 69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line, you’ll want to stay away from triggers.

2. Speaking of which, avoid spam trigger words. According to CoSchedule, these trigger spam alerts: 100%. Congratulations. Don’t. Get started. Innovate. Problem. Quickest. Success. Vacation. Volunteer. “A good rule of thumb is this: If it sounds like something a used car salesman would say, it’s probably a spam trigger word. Think ‘guarantee,’ ‘no obligation’ and so on.” Instead, they encourage creativity and being informative—without giving too much away.

3. “Free” is back in again. For what works well, a recent GetResponse survey revealed that the top words for inducing opens in a subject line are “pdf,” “newsletter” and “ebook.” “If you’re promoting a piece of content or a valuable resource, you’re probably better off if you mention it in the subject line.” For click-to-open rates, “infographic” scored huge at 35.1%—very easy to digest—followed by newsletter at 31.4%. “Sale” and “free” also fared well—the latter drawing this comment: “This phrase, previously believed to cause deliverability issues, seems to work well for quite a few marketers… People still enjoy receiving free things.” Amen.

4. Include a number in your subject line. A recent study looking at 115 million emails surmised that email open and reply rates go up when there’s a number in the subject line. “Numbers and data get your emails noticed, demonstrate a clear and straightforward message about your offer, and set the right expectations for your readers, helping draw them in.” Some I’m seeing today: Last Chance to Save 25% on Mediabistro’s Online Career Workshops; 9 Ways to Avoid the Summer Media Sales Slump; 7 Productivity Hacks to Help You Work Smarter in 2021.

5. Keep your email subject lines relatively short. Here, as is often the case, it’s best to know your audience. If the majority are opening your emails on their phone, then go short. iPhones show about 35-38 characters in portrait mode, and Galaxy phones show roughly 33 characters in portrait mode. “Subject lines that are 17-24 characters long are most likely to boost your email open rates.” That can really feel short sometimes. The main lesson in that is to be direct. Language cuteness has its place, but subject lines need to make an immediate impact.

6. Utilize preheader text to boost subject line open rates. Preheaders summarize the content in your email for added explanation and enticement. Your readers gets an opportunity to preview the email, even while it sits unopened in their inbox. I just started doing this for another newsletter I send out. When done right, the subject line and the preheader complement each other. One example: “Innovative event ideas – Coffee mugs for speakers, drive-in meetings and year-round platforms highlight new twists for the virtual age.”

Market Accurately, Book Panels and Get Sound Right to Keep Your Event Audience Tuned in

by COVID 19Media

Over the break I watched a live virtual event interview with the incredible cast of the new film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom starring Viola Davis. Tragically, it became the last film for Chadwick Boseman, and one in which he may receive a posthumous Oscar nomination for his heartbreaking performamce.

The moderator was an esteemed curator of a museum. At the beginning, however, she went into much-too-lengthy introductions of the many actors. If not for the promise of what was to come, I fear she would have lost many viewers—perhaps they did anyway. I recall this now because I’m reading a virtual event survey called the 2020 Redback Report. In it, they specifically advise to tell your moderator to avoid long bios in the introduction. Focus on “what that presenter will be bringing to the session, rather than where they have worked.”

This tidbit is also important because according to the report, 86% of respondents say they have abandoned a virtual event early—up from 66% a year earlier. So it would seem crucial that the early pace of your events moves briskly and gets to the point.

Here are more takeouts from this event report.

Schedule early in the week… Tuesday is their favorite day to attend digital events, nominated by one in three respondents (32%), closely followed by Wednesday (29%). These two days are almost twice as popular as the next most popular day—which is actually Friday, with 17%. Thursday went from 27% last year to 8% this year. Maybe it becomes just too packed in our remote worlds.

…And early in the day. The time of day that respondents prefer to attend an online event is mid-morning, cited by two in five respondents (39%), followed by mid-afternoon (23%). Any other time in the morning ran third (15%), beating out lunchtime, which was preferred by just 13%. “I’m able to focus more easily and retain information in the mornings,” said one respondent. The problem for our east coast events is that mid-morning makes it pretty early for west coast people.

Book more than one presenter. According to this study, single-presenter events are declining in popularity, with close to half of us preferring two or more voices. Almost three-fourths of the respondents prefer a format with multiple people speaking. Only 18% prefer a single speaker. Interactive audience Q&As are also popular.

Talk with your moderator. In addition to shortening the intros, Redback recommends making sure that your moderator fully understands what the presenter(s) is presenting ahead of time. “You don’t need to know the topic in detail, but you should understand it at a high level.” If possible have the moderator and presenter speak to each other before. But “don’t script it,” they warn. “Have prepared questions that segue into each topic of the presentation, but keep the event free-flowing.”

Be clear in your marketing for the event. Remind attendees why they signed up for an event—looking at the email they responded to could help here—because the most common reason to leave a virtual event early is that it was “not what I signed up for.” Another big reason is when presenters are “too salesy and not educational enough.” Being live does seem to have an advantage as live viewing is increasing. More than four in five respondents (83%) attend at least half of all digital events live rather than on demand—up from 64% who did so in 2019. So they recommend that even when you pre-record a talk, presenting it first at a specific time is best, with at least a live Q&A if possible.

Get the sound right. “If you take one thing away from this year’s Redback Report, make it the importance of crystal clear sound,” they write. Besides the obvious, this is important because many people will switch to audio only as they do other things. Asked what’s most important for a digital event, 63% said audio quality while only 33% said video clarity.

Look for enthusiasm. Asked what makes a virtual event great, 49% of respondents said when “presenters are enthusiastic and engaging. Three in four respondents (74%) said passion and good online delivery were essential qualities in a great presenter—well ahead of being knowledgeable about the content (22%). To improve events, 51% said “being able to access the presenter after the event in an online forum” and almost a third said smoother technology.

This particular report, which you can download here, did mostly stay away from the ability to connect and interact with your colleagues. We will address that another day.

‘Produce Work That Fits Their Needs’; 2021 Predictions Focus on Being Essential

by COVID 19

While none of us has a crystal ball, the journalists and media execs that NiemanLab chooses every year for their predictions usually come pretty close to being right. In the cross-sample I’ve chosen, we are encouraged to think about what worked well in our COVID coverage to apply elsewhere, be essential to our audience, and over-deliver on value.

“Pull out the red pen and start crossing out what’s no longer working,” writes Jacqué Palmer, a senior content strategist focused on newsletters for Gannett, in NiemanLab’s annual Predictions for Journalism 2021. “Do not go into 2021 with the mentality of ‘this is how we’ve always done it.’ This year has shown us that we need to adjust how we serve our audiences.

“Pull all the email data you can for the past three years. If the data is showing you that no one’s reading your sports content in email, pandemic or not, then nix that newsletter. Find out what other channels resonate more with that audience, create a strategy around serving them there, and invite those newsletter subscribers to join you. Do this for all your newsletters. Commit to developing a more intentional strategy around your newsletters that have high engagement, retention and loyalty rates.”

Palmer’s assessment is just one of many excellent entries in this year’s predictions. Here are three more that seem especially on target for us (see them all here):

Take the COVID resources idea into other areas. “When the coronavirus pandemic first hit northern Ohio in early spring, our team at Mahoning Matters poured their efforts into building resources on topics like ordering from local restaurants and educating kids at home, as well as updating a rolling FAQ, writes Mandy Jenkins, general manager of The Compass Experiment at McClatchy and publisher of its two local news sites.” Of course, we saw similar efforts from many SIPA publishers, but then Jenkins goes further: “We took the same approach in compiling our voter guides for November’s election—including content on the issues and candidates on the ballot as well as the basics of how to register to vote. These resources and guides ranked among our most visited stories of the year, serving our regular readers and attracting new ones via social shares and search.”

Don’t chase — build. And build with integrity. “I believe 2021 will be (should be) the year we embrace audiences of all shapes and sizes and work to produce work that fits their needs—as opposed to chasing as many people as we can to pay attention,” writes Cory Haik, chief digital officer at Vice Media Group. “We need to be essential. Here is a non-comprehensive list of some of the things I’m thinking about as I consider the needs of my audience, as opposed to my own business bias in how I serve them:

– Ask your audiences what they need. Talk to real people; be a reporter about it.
– Tell your advertisers what your audiences say they need.
– Community and connection are part of the value proposition of a digital publisher, which can be the opposite of “race for as many eyeballs as possible.”
– People follow people, not brands. Consider how you show up in places where you weren’t really invited (i.e., TikTok).
– Our products should be content-led; we are content companies.
– Dig into the insights and source material. Understand the why and the need being served before launching anything new.”

Deliver more value than expected. “If growing content personalization and the rise of AI were journalism predictions of past years, the prediction for next year goes further—combining both, accelerating personalization to become more comprehensive and integrated,” writes Renée Kaplan, head of digital editorial development of the Financial Times.

“We’ll be developing much more than just the customization of content preferences, combining it with understanding preferred modes of accessing and consuming content. We’ll seek out and leverage every possible kind of behavioral data about our users, trying to understand their day, their seasonal habit shifts, their weekend evenings, their professional aspirations, their families, their holidays—understanding what topics in what formats or devices we need to prioritize for their needs, whether it’s shorter audio briefings in the morning, an email digest of text links on Saturdays, or a customized desktop homepage during working hours.

“The future of news media is one in which we deliver more than what subscribers think they paid for. We compete with not only other similar news media but every kind of frictionless and dynamically adaptive content experience that users get from all the other content apps on their phones. As always—for better or for worse—excellent journalism, even the perfect customized mix of journalism, isn’t enough anymore… We need to learn how to anticipate a specific kind of content need and develop an adapted editorial product for it: the capacity to offer our journalism in a content experience suitable to any (ideally all!) of a user’s needs.”

These four happen to be all from women leaders. Fitting then that the last one I’ll mention is titled, Let’s Normalize Women’s Leadership,” by Errin Haines, editor-at-large at The 19th.

‘Ultimately, You Want People to Be Invested in Your Central Story’; a Master Storyteller Offers Advice

by Media

“In science, as in other fundamentally human pursuits, we would do well to remember that we are only truly at our best and most equipped to tackle grand challenges when we put our differences aside and work together.”

That is the final sentence of the 2020 Silver EXCEL Award winner for Best Feature Article—“Tracking the Journey of a Uranium Cube” by Timothy Koeth and Miriam Hiebert of the department of materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland, for the American Institute of Physics’ Physics Today. It is a dramatic ending to a riveting story about Germany’s failed attempt to build a nuclear reactor during WWII. We are taken through the panels of history that was ignited for the authors by the delivery to them of a small uranium cube in 2013.

So many things work about this article—the language, the historical heft, the arc of the story—but what stands out for me in reading it now is the ending and the place they eventually took the reader. It reminded me of a quote I read from the brilliant storyteller, performer and filmmaker Mike Birbiglia.

“People always say with stories: There needs to be a beginning, a middle and an end. I disagree slightly. I feel like there just has to be an end… and it has to be definitive, and you need to indicate to the audience that eventually you’ll get there. Because if it doesn’t end, people will be furious. They want to go home, they have plans, they have parking arrangements. They just want some ballpark indicator of how long this is going to be. The key thing is starting with your ending and then building it backwards from there.”

Birbiglia was speaking about his excellent live show, The New One—which I was fortunate to see in 2019. Of course, we know that all facets of a story are vital. But that idea of starting by knowing your ending could apply to many of our feature stories these days, in multiple platforms. We hear the importance of storytelling emphasized so much today, and what’s interesting is that even when a story is just 300 words or a video is just a minute, they still need a beginning, middle and end.

How’s this for a beginning of a story: “In the summer of 2013, a cube of uranium two inches on a side and weighing about five pounds found its way to us at the University of Maryland.” And how’s this for a middle? “…the revelation of the existence of the additional [uranium] cubes makes it clear that if the Germans had pooled rather than divided their resources, they would have been significantly closer to creating a working reactor before the end of the war.”

There’s a moral here—as writers for associations, we need to imagine where we want our readers to be at the end of our content. Have we brought them to a better place of understanding or knowledge? Have we given them ideas so they can do their job better? Have we increased their connection to the subject and to the association, or at the least, further engaged them? In this article, the authors have given the reader an incredible amount to think about, and that reflects very positively on AIP and Physics Today.

Here are four more tips from Birbiglia about storytelling:

Be as inclusive as possible. The New One—which centers on he and his wife wanting a baby—started out to be just about that and nothing more. Birbiglia said that was fine for audiences his age but drew silence at a college. “So I needed to come up with a metaphor of something that people can all relate to. And I started thinking about what I was like when I was in college and about how me and my roommates brought home a couch from the street, and then I was like, ‘Oh, that’s sounds like a great metaphor for the whole thing.'”

Be careful of your detours. “With any digression, it’s really about whether it serves the purpose of your central story.” Don’t get too far from your main point, he advises. You might lose people. “Ultimately, you want people to be invested in your central story… If you go too far from that, you can lose people’s investment in the equity you’ve built up…”

Establish eye contact (so to speak). I’m adding this one from a talk I went to by Brian Grazer, the Hollywood producer (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind). Birbiglia said to imagine that you are talking to someone one-on-one at a party. If you digress too much in your story, you might lose them. Grazer, whose latest book is titled Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection, agrees and is very big on making eye contact. The editorial equivalent of that is to engage someone early and stay on point. Don’t let them turn away.

Be as authentic as can be. Let your passions and foibles come through. “In comedy or storytelling, it’s amazing when you figure out how to be yourself,” Birbiglia said.” It’s so hard to do, and it takes years and years. I still struggle with it. To this day, I’m always trying to be more myself.”

Ronn Levine is editorial director of SIIA and can be reached at rlevine@siia.net.

SIIA-amp-network-feature-photo

Platforms to Facilitate Connections May Be the Top Trend for 2021. All Aboard!

by Media

If 2020 was the year of the pivot in the media industry, then 2021 will be the time for facilitating connections. This week, Winsight, a large B2B media organization—they now run the National Restaurant Association Show—announced that they will launch a new platform called Restaurant Community later this month.

 

“The restaurant community consists of people who are exceptionally social and who are creative problem-solvers,” said Chris Keating, EVP of conferences for Winsight (and a speaker at our recent BIMS event). “And Restaurant Community is a place that enables them to connect with each other.”

 

This type of platform may become quite common in the first few months of 2021, as publishers and media organizations look for new ways to connect their audience. It’s actually a bit of a surprise that it has taken this long. In June, the United Fresh Produce Association may have crafted a blueprint by creating United Fresh LIVE! 365, a year-round online platform featuring a permanent expo, social gatherings, on-demand education, webinars, conference programming, and networking opportunities for the global produce industry.

 

“We basically built a year-round convention center,” John Toner, VP of convention and industry collaboration, of the United Fresh LIVE! 365 platform, said. “[The platform] serves as the connection point,” adding that exhibitors whose engagement strategy went beyond the show floor have reaped the best results.

 

For Winsight, restaurant operators and suppliers will have exclusive access to: interviews with industry influencers and restaurateurs from all titles and segments; presentations from Technomic (their data division) experts and Restaurant Business editors; interactive discussion boards; and more. At the heart of Restaurant Community are Share Groups, which provide for category specific conversations, product discovery and meetings directly between operators and suppliers.

 

Just this week, events company Emerald acquired PlumRiver, a leading international provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology. Here’s the biggest reason why. “The acquisition of PlumRiver is a natural extension of our live events business; we can now offer a complimentary, year-round interaction and transaction platform,” said Hervé Sedky, Emerald’s president and CEO, who just started Monday. So this was his first maneuver.

 

While not everyone can acquire a SaaS business, they can create new platforms. In an article on ASAE today titled, Three Ways Associations Can Make Events Year-Round Engagements, Christina Tomlinson writes:

 

“What if you could build on the pre-event momentum you create and keep the conversation going to engage, empower, educate, and inspire your membership 365 days a year? While virtual and hybrid events are a start, they too are typically limited in duration…

 

“Adopt a conference mobile app and microsite or other tech-enabled community. Event technology is so pervasive your options are virtually limitless. Consider what year-round member engagement is worth… How much bandwidth and budget do you have, and how much could you save with this technology? Use your answers to inform the decision about how to approach adopting a new platform or tool.”

 

It makes sense. When I think of all the work that went into our virtual events last year, it seems a shame in this environment to just quickly move on from the learning community we created. That’s also a way to add more value—not only will you have access to this event, but you will become part of a year-long community of like-minded publishers.

 

At The Wall Street Journal, their Live Journalism team recently added a series of monthly events designed for professional women, taking on topics such as caregiving, the impact of racial reckoning on company culture and managing career pivots. These online gatherings included interviews and, yes, small group breakout sessions.

 

“As our live journalism moved into the virtual space, we saw a unique opportunity to reach a broader cohort of Journal readers who craved practical, tactical tips on navigating the current business and cultural climate, while looking for connection to one another,” said Kim Last, live journalism & special content editor. “We designed our monthly series with these readers in mind. Our annual forum was redesigned to not only highlight sharp, newsmaking interviews but also cater to the topics female professionals care about, with the hope to generate fodder for connection.”