Letterman's Late Show Legacy for Email Marketers: The Subject Line

David Letterman announced his retirement after 21 years on the stage of The Late Show, where he created a comedic legacy and, believe it or not, taught a valuable lesson to email marketers everywhere.

The takeaway? Have a killer opening act with a star subject line.

Letterman’s opening act has been arguably the most integral part of The Late Show, reeling in the attention of millions of viewers. For email marketers, view a campaign as you would late-night TV — the subject line is your opening act. It’s an opportunity to draw interest from your customers that will stick throughout the entire experience — from email open to purchase.

To ensure your target audience is hooked from the beginning, it’s vital to invest the appropriate time and resources into creating a powerful and compelling subject line. If you don’t, your marketing campaign runs the risk of flopping directly into the spam folder.

In an effort to help increase overall engagement, boost ROI and build a loyal audience, here are three tips to channel your inner Letterman and set the stage for your email campaign with attention-grabbing subject lines:

Related: Stop Using These Words In Your Emails

1. Don’t wait! Read me now!

Customers get a massive amount of email every day, so you want your subject line to really pop and entice them to open your message.

Be sure to instill a sense of urgency into your subject line with limited-time offers and personalized promotions that will grab their attention. Stating up front that the offer will last only a limited amount of time can increase the likelihood of open rates, click-throughs and purchases. Moreover, making the subject line personalized, relevant and urgent will separate your email from the rest that use generic, spam-like messages.

People want to interact with people — not feel like they’re just another check mark on a long outreach list.

2. Take advantage of trending topics

Don’t hesitate to insert your brand into trending topics.

If you hold back on leveraging topics that the world already has top-of-mind, you could miss out on an incredibly effective campaign. Whether it’s that famous black and blue — or white and gold — dress, the latest celebrity buzz or the newest House of Cards season, try to incorporate current events and pop culture-driven news to get your customer’s attention and increase click-through rates. Provide a fun and topical opener that will entice readers to find out more about your offer.

Related: 6 Ways to Market Your Small Business for Less Than $100

3. Test the waters

Are your contacts on the Taylor Swift or the Kanye side of the pop culture battle? Or do they not care one single bit?

Don’t just guess — test to find out. Use A/B split testing to try at least three different subject lines with a subset of your target list so you can identify the most effective ones for your customers. Making data-driven decisions when it comes to the subject line for your next email campaign can have huge payoffs. Want proof? Campaigner found that marketers who use the winning subject line from an A/B test see, at minimum, a four percent increase in open rates. So don’t just guess and miss out — test, test, test!

If you’d like to see these tips in action, here are some top subject lines that are guaranteed to grab customer attention:

1. Kimye Promotion: 50% Off For North and West Coast


2. Embrace Your Selfie Spirit – 25% All Photo Orders


3. House of Cards Fans, You’re Welcome. Season 3 Discount With Promo: HOC30


4. This Offer Won’t Last Forever (No, We’re Not Talking about T-Swift’s Love Life) 


5. Did You See Black and Blue? Then This Email Is For You.


6. This Offer is More Surprising Than Kim K’s New Hair!


7. The Bachelor Special Promotion: Buy One Bouquet and Get The Final Rose Free


8. Open This Email. It’s Really, Really Ridiculously Good Looking.


9. Best Deal Ever: $17K Watch. HA! Just Kidding! We Aren’t Apple.


10. This Email is Not From a Personal Account and Has Been Hilary Approved

For more than two decades, Letterman has been in the spotlight winning over a variety of audiences, and it pays to take a page from his script. Even though his time at The Late Show is coming to an end, his legacy will surely remain.

As a marketer, your email campaigns should aim to do the same, creating a lasting impact on your recipients. Subject lines are your stage entrance, opening monologue and your hook — make each one a star to drive your email marketing success.

Related: 8 Ways to Stop Boring Your Email Subscribers

Letterman"s Late Show Legacy for Email Marketers: The Subject Line

Here's How Marketers Late To Mobile Game Can Still Win

Many marketers aren’t functioning at the top of their mobile game, and they’re not likely to admit it. But it’s time to get hip, friends. Mobile adoption is increasing and there’s still time to get it right (assuming you’re not already) – and win. And here are some stats to frighten you into acting now!

Recent research from PunchTab shows the “global mobile wallet market is expected to reach 1,420.8 million users by 2020” – and Apple Pay just kicked that figure into overdrive.

Why should you care? Online is quickly encroaching on your brick and mortar store – and consumers will buy where it’s convenient. Much like accepting credit cards, mobile pay will soon be the norm. You have a little bit of time, Mom and Pop shops, but not much.

The outlook for online brands requires a more immediate response though. We had a Q&A with Marla Schimke, VP of Marketing at Zumobi around the “unprecedented opportunity mobile apps have created for impactful content marketing campaigns.”

ST: How should companies gauge whether their content marketing efforts are a success?

MS: Currently 42 percent of marketers are satisfied with their content marketing efforts, which is an impressive number for a young industry. However, there is room for improvement. Content marketing is all about audience engagement so effective ways to measure are increased in-app session times, conversions and retention. The aim is to create a customer journey that keeps users coming back for more.

ST: How can content marketers make mobile content marketing more effective? 

MS: According to Flurry Analytics, time spent on mobile devices grew in the US by 9.3 percent, from 2 hours and 42 minutes to 2 hours and 57 minutes; on the other hand, time spent on TV has remained flat at 2 hours and 48 minutes daily.

By implementing content curation/automated solutions like mobile content marketing platforms that assist marketers with aggregating all of their content where their clients are (on mobile devices), they have access to granular insights on what’s working, what’s not, and why.

ST: Can you provide an example of this in action?

MS: For example, if a retail brand posts three DIY blogs to their mobile app’s content hub, with a mobile content marketing solution marketers can visualize in real-time which blogs are performing the best (i.e., which blog is being opened the most/the least, how much time is being spent on each piece of content, whether or not they click through to a related piece of content, etc.).

With this insight, marketers can better understand the individual customer journey and tailor their content marketing efforts to present content that is the most on-demand and personalized for the user. They can then use this information to inform their other marketing channels like email and event print marketing. Thus, marketers will see increased ROI both online and in-store.

ST: How important is curating/automating in real-time? 

MS: Very. With mobile marketing content solutions, marketers can use a dashboard to immediately see what is working and what, perhaps, is not. They can then make adjustments on the fly to ensure that the app user has the best experience possible, manifest in the user’s returning to the app again and again.

ST: What’s next for content marketing and mobile?

MS: Mobile content marketing solutions will help brands monetize their users in new ways by introducing relevant products and services based on their expressed interests. It is exciting to see how the data analytics generated by these solutions can help marketers gain valuable insights into consumer behavior and concurrently enhance customer profiles for their cross-channel marketing efforts.

The convergence of mobile apps and content marketing is here – and adopting an omni-channel approach that takes EVERY channel into account is critical.

And be sure to keep the corresponding importance of incorporating Mobile Pay into your overarching mobile strategy because beyond reaching them, “consumers seek fast and easy ways to pay – and retailers must accommodate this new path to purchase – or watch their share of basket get chipped away by those who do.”

Where do YOU see mobile marketing taking us in the next year or two?

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Here"s How Marketers Late To Mobile Game Can Still Win