By Kirk Chritton, Director of Marketing and Product Development

At the recent MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director of MarketingExperiments, presented an enlightening optimization workshop. Supported by statistical analysis, Dr. McGlaughlin challenged conventional wisdom and presented key concepts to help guide marketers as they attempt to improve response to their email campaigns.

He demonstrated that a room full of email marketing professionals were unable predict which of three versions of an email would outperform a control message. His point was that knowledge of best practices alone is not enough to maximize response rates. For example, having an offer “ above the fold” is not necessarily a major component of increased response.

One key concept is that “Optimization occurs in the mind,” according to Dr. McGlaughlin. In fact, he asserts that “clarity trumps presentation,” with an important distinction between internal clarity and external clarity. Internal clarity means that you understand what you want the reader to do as a result of the email. External clarity means that you ensure that the reader understands what you want them to do as a result of the email.

The true goal of most emails, he said, is not to sell a product, but to get a click to a landing page that sells the product. Many marketers try to send a whole page as an email message, which is counterproductive. Attempting to do too much in the email hurts results.

MarketingExperiments, provides a number of free self-guided clinics on their website, in addition to in-depth paid formal training sessions. Also, MarketingSherpa provides a wide selection of free email marketing research results and benchmarks on their website.

And, of course, MCH is happy to work with you to build effective email campaigns with our Channel_e™ email services.