A study of B-to-B email marketing messages by SilverPOP identified several creative elements that boosted open rates and click rates, writes Kate Maddox for BtoBonline.com.

SilverPOP evaluated creative elements ranging from content in the subject line to the design format of emails, from an analysis of 147 email campaigns sent by 115 B-to-B marketers between April and August 2006.

Some of the interesting findings:

• Emails that included the company name of brand in the subject line had significantly higher open rates — 32% compared with 20% for messages without the company name.
• Postcard-style and varied-cell emails received higher click rates (both had an average of 7.9%) compared with other formats, which each had an average of less than 5%.
• Adding more links can actually cause results to deteriorate. The number of links resulting in the highest click rate was three.
• Text-style links averaged click rates that were 2.6 percentage points higher than image-style lnks.
• The top offers were a percentage off the purchase price, a dollar amount off the purchase price or a free gift.
• Placing the call to action “above the fold” resulted in higher click rates.

My comment about subject line: Perhaps one of the most overlooked element of an email creative is subject line. Marketers could spend most of their time designing HTML emails or writing copy for perfect response, but recipients will only see all of those if they have enough interest on the email and actually click.

Moreover, subject lines are easy to test. For example, you can insert a time sensitive offer in the subject line to see how users respond to your offer. Most likely, such headlines will yield better result.

[BtoBonline.com]