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Why Short and Sweet Doesn’t Always Hit the Mark When It Comes to Effective Sales Messages

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As a marketer, I’m always trying to do two things:

1. Get my message and point across in as few words as possible.
2. Improve response and engagement rates.  

After reading a new study released by Implisit, I just might rethink #1 on my list!  In this study, they looked at a whopping 250,000 sales messages to help identify what elements drive more response.  A few things they found really surprised me and are definitively items we’re going to test here.  

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Long subject lines work.
Emails with subject lines over 10 words were found to have significantly higher response rates when compared to emails with shorter subject lines.  

Really short–or really long–content works best.  
Unlike short subject lines, short content that is under 100 words can work well.  Additionally, content with more than 500 words seems to work good too.  Where you don’t want to get stuck is in that middle ground of 100+ to 499 words.  So if you can’t effectively get your message across in 100 words or less, add more content in to get you past that 500 word mark.

You need to make a good first impression–but persistence does pay off.
The first email has the highest response rate but emails 2 and 3 still have good responses.  After that though, response falls off dramatically.  

Put a face with your name.
Including a signature with a photo on your sales emails was found to significantly improve response rates.  

Here are some more interesting findings:

EmailMessages
 

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