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Although the term was coined just ten years ago, crowdsourcing has found its way into just about every aspect of our lives. TV shows like The Voice rely on viewers to determine winners, brands such as Lays, Budweiser and Lego challenge consumers to create and vote on new products, and apps like Yelp unleash the critique in all of us.
Of course, we can’t ignore the greatest crowdsources of them all—social networks. Every minute, Facebook users contribute 2.5 million posts, Twitter users tweet 300,000 times, and 72 hours of new video content is uploaded to YouTube. Then the real crowdsourcing begins, as consumers across the globe determine the best content with their likes, shares and comments.
Which brings us to the topic of how important great subject lines are. We know that 33% of recipients open emails based on the subject line alone, and 50% of all emails are opened on mobile, where smaller screens condense the opportunity to sell the email. Regardless of how relevant, personalized or timely the content of the email is, the few words contained in the subject line can determine the success of the campaign. As the advertising revolutionary David Ogilvy surmised: When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents of your dollar.
I’m going out on a limb and guessing you probably don’t have a dedicated writer of email subject lines on staff. Instead, you and your team rely on a combination of creative instincts and plenty of testing to hone in on messages that work. Sometimes you’re on target, other times it takes many iterations.
Why not leverage the collective wisdom of social crowds to streamline the process and dramatically improve the performance of email campaigns? Why not let the social masses be your almost real-time focus group?
While social media monitoring started with listening to social chatter to shape social content, it plays a far more expansive role today. R&D teams use social listening as they develop and refine new products, pricing and merchandising teams use listening to prioritize features and understand price thresholds, and marketing and service teams have reshaped support with social customer care.
And now, email marketers can leverage social listening to create subject lines that have mass appeal. Here’s how.
Social listening provides insights into the topics and trends that matter most to your prospects and customers. It enables you to monitor what people are saying on your owned social channels and across the web—then leverage the intelligence in your digital marketing channels. To develop relevant and timely subject lines, social listening enables you to answer questions such as:
Which of your products are users discussing? Which attributes and features of those products interest them most?
Are there use cases, testimonials, or trends that resonate more than others?
What are the biggest questions/queries people have about your products or competitors?
Which words or phrases are most often used in conversations about your products and brand?
In which geographical region of the country/world are people discussing your brand and competitors?
With the knowledge you gather, you’ll be able to pinpoint words, phrases, topics, and questions that are top-of-mind across social channels, then produce subject lines that drive opens—and hopefully, conversions.
One final thought: As you shape your email subject lines and content for broader appeal, make them easy to share. While forwards are great—social shares have far more reach. Consider making snippets or offers tweetable. It’s a simple way to amplify your message, plus you’ll be able to watch its success and grow your audience by listening for them to perpetuate across social networks.
