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‘Short and Specific Are Most Successful’; Email Subject Lines and Send Times Matter

by Media

In their Email Engagement Report – Q2 2022, Omeda broke down Best Days to Send by what you are sending. Newsletters drew best click rates on Monday/Tuesday, and marketing emails on Wednesday/Thursday. “A lot of success can boil down to two factors: which day of the week to send an email and the best length for a subject line,” they wrote.

In that report, Omeda also tested their results that short subject lines get more opens and clicks—on their own newsletter mailing.

“In the end, our winning subject line was ‘Omeda Newsletter’—beating out every phrase and all the top subject line keywords we tested,” they wrote. “After testing longer and shorter phrases on other types of emails, what we found is simple: subject lines that are short, concise and specific are most successful.”

Here are 9 other ways to get more attention for your emails:

Take a number please. Email open and reply rates go up when there’s a number in the subject line. “Numbers and data get your emails noticed,” a report said last year. “Demonstrate a clear and straightforward message about your offer, and set the right expectations for your readers, helping draw them in.”

Craft your welcome message. More than 30% of onsite digital subscriptions originate from welcome messages that provide an introduction to new readers, and “warn” messages that serve as reminders as the reader approaches the paywall meter limit. Numbers show that getting new members/subscribers engaged from the outset proves enormously important when renewals come up. Use your welcome email or series to ask questions of your subscribers.

Compare and test. Compare when people opened your email to the day/time you actually sent it. Then send your next email at that time when your readers are telling you they are most likely to open email.” Also test different send lines—a person compared to an organization; a mobile responsive design; and a strong call to action—is it telling people exactly the action they should take?

Monitor your sender reputation. According to Demand Metric, “a surprising percentage of study participants do not monitor their sender reputation or were unsure if it is being monitored. Marketers who are not actively monitoring their sender reputation should strongly consider leveraging Sender Score, Google Postmaster Tools, Microsoft SNDS, or other similar tools.”

Adjust your subject line to how your audience opens your emails. If it’s on their phone, then go short on the subject line. According to a study from Marketo, 41 characters, or 7 words, seems to be a sweet spot for email subject line length, which is about 10 characters less than the average subject line. Be direct. While language cuteness has its place, subject lines need to make an immediate impact and reflect what’s in the email. That will also build trust.

Give thought to the preheader text. Preheaders summarize the content in your email for added explanation and enticement. Your readers get an opportunity to preview the email, even while it sits unopened in their inbox. I just started doing this for another newsletter, and the open rate has increased. 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.”

Send at off times. “As found in our report, 70% of all email traffic occurs within the first 10 minutes of every hour,” writes Greg Kimball, SVP for Validity. “It’s easy for email marketers to schedule their bulk sends for round numbers like 12 and 1 p.m., but if every marketer thinks this way, that means your recipients are getting dozens of impersonal, automated emails in the same chunks of time throughout the day. Shifting your sends by just 10 to 15 minutes means your emails won’t get lost in the hourly influx of messages.”

Seek customer feedback. “To ensure high email relevancy, implement ongoing feedback mechanisms,” Validity reports. “Functionality like ‘rate this email’ provides a quick way to gain visibility into what subscribers want. It’s also a good idea to routinely schedule re-engagement campaigns to maintain list hygiene.

Be empathetic. “The COVID-19 pandemic taught senders important lessons about achieving the right balance of commercialism and empathy in email,” writes Validity. “…Senders need to find ways to give their emails a human element and sell with sensitivity.” I forgot a volunteer usher assignment recently and expected a stern email. Instead, they checked that I was okay. That went a long way for me.

 

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‘Powerful But It’s Not Magic’; Impact of AI on Publishing Will Be Vast, Varied and Guarded

by Media

“Media companies continue to bet on artificial intelligence as a way of delivering more personalized experiences and greater production efficiency. More than eight-in-ten of our sample say these technologies will be important for better content recommendations (85%) and newsroom automation (81%). More than two-thirds (69%) see AI as critical on the business side in helping to attract and retain customers.”
—Reuters Institute’s Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2022

Data scientists at The Guardian joined forces with Agence France-Presse to find a better way to identify and attribute quotes, using machine learning. “This could help create new beats focused on accountability reporting like tracking how public personalities’ opinion changes over time by searching and comparing their quotes from archives,” reported Journalism.co.uk.

On Aug. 25, we delved further into this in the first episode of a new webinar series called Signature Live with publisher Carla Kalogeridis. The webinar focused on the realities of artificial intelligence for publishers and media companies—both from a content and editorial perspective, but also from an ethics perspective.

One of Carla’s guests was Paul Lekas, senior vice president, global public policy, for SIIA. “Some publishers recognize the efficiencies and consistencies that AI can bring, but they aren’t completely sold on the ethics of it in certain types of work,” Lekas said. “The biases of the programmer become the biases of the AI.

“I see a role for it on the back end, but some publishers may be concerned about the ethics of content generation. AI can help publishers generate content, but the ethical questions come in when AI is doing something that humans should be doing. You might use AI to generate a first draft, but there’s the potential for unintended bias if you don’t bring in a human to finish it up.”

The other guest on Thursday was David Brake, COO of PageMajik. “If you imagine the roles of all the players in a publishing workflow as both a source of data and someone who acts upon data, you’ve taken a step toward recognizing narrow AI and smart technology as a solution,” Brake said. “By automating the exchange of data and using a technology that acts upon that data on a role player’s behalf, you’ve put both feet in the water.”

Here are other ways that AI is already positively impacting what we do.

Go through vast amounts of data. Emilia Díaz Struck, research editor and Latin American coordinator for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), said they use machines to look into large datasets and flag up anything unusual. Diaz Struck and her team used this technique during their Implant File investigation that “uncovered hundreds of patient deaths that were misclassified as medical device malfunction.” In a Q&A with JournalismAI, she said: “What we have figured out is that AI can be really powerful but it’s not magic. I see there is a lot of potential to use machine learning in the type of work we do because we deal with vast amounts of data.”

Track diversity of sources quoted in a publication and bylines. This has become hugely important with the reckoning the industry has faced over the last year. New gender pronouns and the need for more ethnicity metadata would require more refining. “We want to advance the measurement science for being able to not only understand what [fair AI] requirements and practices are but be able to measure them in quantitative or qualitative work,” said Elham Tabassi, chief of staff, IT Lab, NIST.

Search through archived material. “[Sweden’s] Sveriges Radio’s global news podcast recently talked about new developments in the murder of the Swedish prime minister in the 1980s,” reports Journalism.co.uk. “However, the producers soon realized some of their listeners were not even born yet and knew little about the case. To help them out, the team used soundbites from archived shows that featured important information… Taken further, the AI system could recommend more soundbites to listen to according to users’ preferences, instead of suggesting entire shows, making audio content more engaging and relevant.”

Improve the tools that we use. Julie Babayan, senior manager for government relations and public policy for Adobe, gave an example from Photoshop of how having diverse representation led to spotting a bias in the development of their new Neural Filters—allowing them to update the AI data set before the feature was released. “We spent a year-long process to make sure that we were developing AI technologies in an ethical and responsible and inclusive way for our customers and for our communities,” she said.

Scrape big datasets. Last year, Gabriel Kahn, a journalism professor at USC Annenberg School for Journalism and publisher of Crosstown, a non-profit community project, said they use AI-powered tools to scrape public datasets and store content in the cloud, reported Journalism.co.uk. “Humans then turn that data into narratives that address people’s concerns around topics as varied as crime, traffic, air pollution or coronavirus. By having a location tag on each piece of data, every story can be turned into neighborhood news.”

One other great resource is JournalismAI, a global initiative that aims to inform media organizations about the potential offered by AI-powered technologies. It is a project of Polis—the London School of Economics journalism think-tank—supported by the Google News Initiative.

 

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SIIA Diversity Efforts Spotlighted in Uplifting Impact Podcast

by DEI

The Uplifting Impact Podcast’s Justin Ponder is joined by Jeff Joseph, Former President of Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) as he defines what is digital equity inside big and small organizations. The former Starlight Public Affairs Officer will share knowledge with listeners on how organizations can manage and adapt positive reinforcements of digital equity.

The Uplifting Impact Podcast is a platform that fosters dynamic conversations around the intersection of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Leadership. Directing our conversations are Uplifting Impact’s Chief Change Agent, Deanna Singh, and Chief Information Officer, Justin Ponder. Both are renowned thought leaders, teachers and consultants within the DEI space and are known for the ability to teach difficult lessons in gentle ways that inspire change and innovation within organizations. Click here to listen to the full podcast.

 

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Quizzes, Anniversaries and Q&A Content Can Bring Engagement and Fuel Your Archives

by Media

Archives can be used in many ways. They can feed quizzes, populate features and anniversaries, and be a source of valuable evergreen content. It can also work the other way. Education Week and MedLearn Media have had quizzes for years now, and the answers turn into their own impressive archive and search platform.

Education Week’s latest quiz is How Much Do You Know About Literacy? It’s sponsored by Lexia Learning, but “Education Week has full editorial control of content.” I got 3 out of 7 right—“Looks like you didn’t quite pass. See answers and learn more below.” Lexia gets a “Find a Solution” button, and, more importantly, all of this information becomes part of a vast archive.

One of my favorite publisher features continues to be MedLearn Media’s Compliance Question of the Week. There are weekly questions in six categories: Cardiology, Laboratory, Pharmacy, Radiology, Respiratory and General. While this does take some upkeep, all that information adds up to a hefty Compliance Question Archive that can be searched with the probe, “Looking for an answer?”

Quizzes are just one way to use and populate an archive. Here are other ideas that can provide value to your audience.

Dig for historic value. Your institutional memory matters. You have old publications with significant value, just sitting on shelves—print or digital—somewhere in a makeshift morgue. Do a little digitization work every once in a while to ensure that this info isn’t getting lost. Republish old ads and photos occasionally. We love nostalgia. And if you’ve been doing this a while, This Day in Our History or 10 Years Ago This Month… can make for a fun look back. Maybe there’s an old pay phone in a picture—I just saw one in perfect shape at the National Building Museum (but it was real, not part of an exhibit).

Look for evergreen content ideas. Fall for the Books, Spring Cleaning Ideas (for Your Organization). Things to Be Thankful for at Thanksgiving. At the start of our in-person events, I update the blog post Making the Most of Attending Live Events and always hear from a grateful publisher who is sending someone new. Last year, a member told me about a post they had first used in 2013 offering reminders or ideas to try. “While it’s still highly relevant, it’s not exactly earth-shaking advice,” she wrote me. Yet the article received 144 likes and 45 comments from people sharing some of the advice. Five of those comments came in well after the post, so it was still resonating.

Use content from your online discussion or forum group—or your webinar Q&As. This has become one of The Washington Post’s biggest repurposing strategies—especially in their travel, relationship and restaurant columns. Some of the relationship discussions go as far back as 20 years ago! I guess some of those situations and the advice for them does not change much. I’ve always thought that the Q&A parts of webinars can be more valuable than the presentations, but they often get lost being at the end. Publish those Q&As as a special column.

Take a quarterly look at what has resonated most. Be transparent—let your audience know what your most popular posts were. “People forget about 90% of what they read after 12 weeks,” said Luis Hernandez, editor in chief for InvestorPlace Media. “Check your analytics and repeat your most popular posts every quarter.” We’ve been doing this for the last couple years and have received good feedback. Everyone is in a time crunch these days and is likely to miss an article here or there. It also brings attention to the moments where the content really sparked interest and revenue-generating ideas.

Make access to your archives a valued commodity. As part of its landmark campaign for its 75th anniversary celebrations, the Association for Computing Machinery is opening up a large portion of its archives, reports Associations Now. ACM will make the first 50 years of its published records—more than 117,500 documents dating from 1951 to 2000—accessible to the public without a login. “It’s nice to link it to the 75th celebration year in general, but the emphasis was really coming from what it takes to get the Digital Library fully open,” said CEO Vicki L. Hanson. “All those seminal articles from years ago can be made available to everyone.”

In 2012, Harvard Business Publishing made the decision to open archive access to subscribers on hbr.org and haven’t looked back. They saw a 20% increase in subscription revenue right away.

 

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‘What Do You Have That’s Truly Unique and Scalable?’ Lessons From the Axios Sale

by Media

“The lesson of the digital era: Chase fads, fantasy and clicks, you fade or famish,” Jim VandeHei, Axios co-founder and chief executive, said last week in a New York Times article. “Chase a loyal audience with quality information, you can flourish.” There are definite lessons to be learned from the big sale of Axios last week.

I had dinner with a scientific, non-journalist friend last night when I brought up Axios—fresh off their $525 million sale to Cox Enterprises. “Oh I know them,” my friend said. “The short, bulleted newsletter—very easy to read.”

Yes, that’s the one. They usually give a quick, one-sentence summary like today: “Morning Brew… has launched a creator program that allows independent personalities to work for the company full time while maintaining separate and distinct products and brands.”

And then you get the all-important “Why it matters: The program will help Morning Brew expand into niche areas, like personal finance, entrepreneurship and productivity, said Austin Rief, CEO of Morning Brew. It will also help the company continue to expand into business verticals outside of newsletters.”

Then comes “Go deeper (2 min. read).” The next “Go deeper” is for a 1 min. read, so they’ve basically redefined the word “deeper.”

“If there’s one thing Axios is known for, it’s for its ‘smart brevity’ format that’s heavy on bullet points and light on expository padding,” Simon Owens wrote in an excellent column titled 4 Things Axios Did Right in his Media Newsletter on Substack last week. “It’s perfectly designed for email consumption, but Axios also prioritized web optimization for each of its scooplets so that they could be easily shared on social media.”

Here are other reasons for Axios’ success:

Develop your platform with growth in mind. “Listen, you’re trying to look at a company’s revenue—what do you have that’s truly unique and truly scalable?” VandeHei told Vanity Fair. “So from the Cox perspective, they’ve got some neat things to work with. We’ve got this national platform with an elite audience. We’re launching our high-end subscription business, Axios Pro, so there’s endless room to grow in the high-end subscription space. We’re in more than 20 cities today, and there are a lot more cities in the United States.”

Right vehicle at the right time. “There are so many ways technology has helped email newsletters become a replacement for the newspaper and magazine as people’s view into the world and how they get news and information,” said Kerel Cooper, CMO of email service provider LiveIntent. “It’s in your inbox. It’s there almost on-demand when you’re ready to consume it. With the pandemic and everyone being home, that growth accelerated.” In Omeda’s Email Engagement Report for Q2 2022, newsletters have a better click rate than every other email type except for reader service and white papers.

Niches contain riches (and first-party data generators). From Owens: “Given the number of verticals that Axios launched, it’s essentially a general interest news outlet at this point—no different from a New York Times or USA Today—but its emphasis on niche newsletters allowed it to generate great first party data that made it the perfect vehicle for native ads.” The Omeda report writes: “Email continues to be a force, and with a few tricks to test out and some diligence, you can optimize performance over time. Plus, when your audience strategy is built on a foundation of first-party data, you’ll be well-prepared for future changes.”

Hire great people. “Axios devoted a substantial portion of its hiring to mid-career journalists with already-existing brands,” Owens writes. (Industry Dive, which was also recently sold for that $525 million tag, used that strategy as well.) “While the average salary was likely higher, these journalists were able to scale up their niche verticals more quickly and efficiently than they otherwise would have if they were hired right out of college.” Owens also wrote that they never became overly reliant on Facebook, thus having more ownership over their audience.”

Stick to your mission and push what you’re good at. “Hopefully, with Politico first, and Axios today, we have shown a way for serious journalism to thrive in the digital era,” VandeHei said. “This country so desperately needs it.” Axios’ founders also wrote a book called Smart Brevity to “share their transformative methods for punching through the noise to get people to pay attention to what matters most.” The title says it all.