Why LPs Might Have Ignored Your Last Email
By now, you’ve already heard time and time again that subject lines are the most important determining factor on whether your prospective LPs decide to engage on an email campaign.
Here, we’re going to use real data gathered from real campaigns within our industry to show you why LPs might have ignored your last email.
Subject lines are important because LPs (as with anyone) skim them, and make a decision whether or not to open your email. During this skimming process -- which might last 1-2 seconds -- three questions come to mind:
“Is it relevant to me?”
“Does it pique my curiosity?”
“Are they trying to sell me something… again?”
A snapshot at one of our campaigns from last quarter
We eat our own cooking. With each email campaign, we aren’t just A/B testing, but A/B/C/D testing (!) subject lines. In Q4 of last year, a marketing campaign targeting managers in the alternatives industry was sent with the following four subject lines, and here’s how they performed in terms of open %s:
Four similar emails - the exact same preview text, content, time/day of launch, and all four segments (of 10,000 each) were fully randomized.
The only difference lay in the subject line. And yet - one of them (#4) performed far worse than the other 3 segments, which came in at industry averages.
“Is your Strategy Compelling or White Noise?” came in 35% behind the other three on average for open %s, and as a result, 24% worse in engagement i.e. clickthroughs, further visits to website, etc.
Here, we’re talking about hundreds of prospects that have missed the content in this particular campaign due to the subject line, when they asked themselves:
“Is it relevant to me?”
“Does it pique my curiosity?”
“Are they trying to sell me something… again?”
From worst-performing to best-performing
A couple of weeks later, a re-send was done to the same 4 segments, only to managers who didn’t open the first email. But not without first changing the subject line for Segment #4.
The worst-performing subject line (“Is your Strategy Compelling or White Noise?”) was different from the other three that it didn’t contain the words “LP” or “Investor” in it. Something that was very relevant to our audience.
We replaced it with: “Does Your Strategy Solve A Problem For Investors”.
The new subject line became our top-performing segment, and we saw a 38.9% increase in opens compared to the previous subject line. Most importantly, it beat out the other three segments.
Subject lines do matter. It’s why some communications fly over LPs heads. But, you already knew that. We just wanted to make sure you saw it with real data, to real people, within the alternatives industry
Keep it concise. Include relevant keywords. Always A/B test.
