E-mail Creative

Rachael Heapps, executive creative director at RappDigital, New York, discusses how to craft high-performing e-mail creative.

DIRECT: Do personalized e-mails perform better?

HEAPPS: Simple name-slug personalization can lift the click-through rate by up to 30%. We've seen true content personalization lift response rates by 300%. There's two ways of creating a more personalized experience through e-mail: getting [recipients] to check off their interests on a survey and by tracking their behavior.

There's one downside to personalization: You need great content on your Web site and a lot of it.

DIRECT: How important is copy length?

HEAPPS: Remember, people scan their messages in the e-mail preview pane. You literally have that ‘window’ of opportunity to get their attention, which is the top third of the e-mail. If you don't have a relationship with a recipient, you should keep the length to one screen. The job of the e-mail is to pull snippets from the Web site that are relevant to the consumer.

DIRECT: How many links are ideal?

HEAPPS: It's like the 80/20 rule. In a test we did, in an e-mail with 20 links in it, 80% of the users clicked on only five specific links. Those were the links that were offer-driven or had some kind of value added.

DIRECT: What is the purpose of the subject line?

HEAPPS: To communicate credibility. Unlike traditional direct marketing, you don't want to create anything too clever or too curious, like you would with outer envelope copy. If the company name is in the “From” line, repeat who the e-mail is from in the subject line, so as people scan their e-mail, they will be sure to see who it's from.

Avoid spam language like “Free” or “Hello.”

Use precise, direct language, such as: “Vacation Offers From Hyatt.”

If they don't open the e-mail, you can't talk with them.

You have one opportunity to get the click.