What emails do you open?  The “From” field and subject line are the first draw for most people and a determinant for gaining a higher open rate.  MarketingProfs.com has an informative article that breaks down examples of awesome and awful email subject lines.  The article is a good read and worth your time.

I’ll skip to the end where the author, Josh Nason, provides a handful of tips for writing effective subject lines:

• Don’t discount the importance of the From name. Keep it your company name and not an individual’s name or drawn-out term. In addition, keep your company name out of the subject line: It’s redundant—a waste of valuable real estate.
• There is no point to using all caps in a subject line. OK? (Unless it’s “OK.”)
• Write a compelling subject line that won’t deceive people. If people aren’t opening it, that’s OK, as you’ll have many more campaigns to intrigue them. If you break the receiver’s trust early, you’ll have to work twice as hard to get it back. Never forget the Golden Rule.
• Most important, have some fun with subject lines! If you’re struggling that much with how to talk to your audience in a single-sentence format, give it to someone else to writes. Just make sure that you don’t explain the task in all caps, please.

And here are a couple of examples from the article:

From: AAA Northern New England
Subject: AAA Newsletter—February 2008

Ah, the dreaded (Company X) Newsletter with the month and date. Fun! When I opened up the newsletter, there were all kinds of great discount offers; but, instead, this subject line reads more “library” than “block party.”

From: Bob Marley
Subject: Comedian Bob Marley Returns To Boston!!

It’s a direct statement that his fans in that area would likely open. Since “Bob Marley” is already in the From line, there’s no need to repeat in the subject line. I’d try “Boston dates coming up soon!” instead. Why waste the valuable real estate?

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In case you ever wondered why your marketing campaigns were not working:

(h/t Seth Godin)

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Interesting history lesson in a short Inc.com post:

William Wrigley, Jr. arrived in Chicago in 1891 with just $32 to his name. The 29-year-old entrepreneur began manufacturing soap, first enticing customers by offering free baking soda with every purchase. He later tried offering customers free chewing gum. The gum soon became more popular – and profitable – than his soap venture. Like many of the famous companies which have sprung up during recessions, Wrigley sold inexpensive goods that could be easily mass produced. Now, I’m not saying that chewing gum actually served as a distraction from the strife of the times, but what kind of startup do you think fairs particularly well during a recession? Do consumers need distraction during downturns? If you have a great business idea, does it even matter when you launch your business?

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Clearly newspapers are the poster child for this topic.  ABCnews.com approaches this topic with research that forecasts industry changes over the next 5 years.  Some of their predictions and suggestions:

Another way to avoid disaster? Diversify. In response to decades of declining circulation and shaky print advertising numbers, newspaper publishers are expanding their holdings in non-traditional ways. The two largest, Gannett and Tribune, own a stake Careerbuilder.com, the online job search Web site. In 2005, The New York Times Co. bought About.com, a general information site. Will it work? The jury is out. Worth noting, though–the industry’s most successful transition is also its most radical. The Washington Post Co. secured their future by buying Kaplan Learning centers, morphing the company into an “information” firm and leaning on the new entity, rather than their news operations, to drive growth.

The Washington Post has done a good job of adapting ahead of the trend.  However, I wonder if it is simply too late for these other papers to make such a shift in their business model (I think it is).

Here is one I didn’t think about, but it is a certain trend based on Gen Y:

The most surprising find: While technology is changing the face of many industries, the firms within them are often doing quite well. One strategy for surviving a technological onslaught is to control the change itself. AT&T and Verizon, the largest wired telecommunications firms, are hardly worried that more than 1 million phone “land lines” are expected to be switched off each year between now and 2012. Both of those firms saw their wireless subscriber numbers surge in 2007.

True.  I suspect home phone lines will disappear in the very near future as cell phones eventually become the standard.  The article is a good read if you have the time.

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The economy is slow, but this is a different economy than we have encountered before now.  I suppose this is always true since the economy is completely dynamic so no two points in time are ever the same.  Nonetheless, abcnews.com offers us this story - Job Winners and Losers in Hard Times - which has an excellent bit of information regarding this economy:

In an environment of a sluggish economy and rising unemployment, analysts said there will be some safe harbors where job demand will keep growing. First and foremost in this group will be health care, where the demographics of an aging population mean the demands for medical care will keep rising.

Also a bright spot in a generally bleak jobs picture will be education, again driven by the demographics of a rising population of school-age children and students attending colleges, community colleges and trade schools.

Outside of those areas, the falling value of the dollar against many foreign currencies is helping to power an export boom, which is benefiting farmers and some segments of manufacturing, particularly airplane makers and factories producing various types of heavy machinery where the United States enjoys a competitive edge.

Recessions, slow downs, whatever…the dynamic economy never stops.  There are always pockets to target so make the adjustments you need to make to keep closing deals.

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BusinessWeek.com offers up a provocative article about the slowing economy - The Upside of Recession.   Interesting opening:

Pop quiz, hot shot: What do MTV, Trader Joe’s, and the iPod have in common? Yes, of course, they’re all now ubiquitous and make our lives much more agreeable.

But to us, the most interesting thing about all three is that these great brands were born during recessions. (Trader Joe’s: 1958; MTV: 1981; iPod: 2001, if you are scoring at home.)

The authors are just warming up:

Cutting (ed.- lay offs) across the board is the coward’s way of dealing with a downturn. It assures that no one is going to yell—how could anyone possibly object to sharing the pain equally—and it gives the timid a built-in excuse to fail. (”Gee, I know no one liked our new product, but they slashed our budget 22.73% right before launch, so, it wasn’t my fault.”)

But suppose you use the recession not as an excuse or a reason for hiding under your desk but rather as a catalyst for innovation? Instead of cutting everything by 22.73%, why not see the downturn as a chance to whack 90% (or the whole darn thing) out of stuff that isn’t working well?

Cutting off funding to your laggards would free up a lot of money to back the one, or possibly two, big ideas you have been working on, ideas that have a chance to become breakthrough brands. If you want to be less aggressive, you could place more resources behind the existing ideas/programs/products that are already working well.

These are my people - “a coward’s way” is about as direct a shot as you can take. They close their article with this graph:

Recessions by definition are temporary. Great companies and great executives don’t abandon their growth strategies in light of temporary setbacks. They attack aggressively, while everyone else is pulling back.

Read the entire thing.

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We’re big fans of Jeff Thull here at The Hire Sense and we always try to keep up with his articles.  This one from Inc.com - Three Keys to a Successful New Year - is well worth the read.  Ok, we might be a bit late getting to this one since it’s theme is for the new year.

I have always appreciated a doctor analogy for selling and I think Thull lays out a good example here:

Like an experienced doctor who continually diagnoses for problems and recognizes symptoms, you see the issues your solutions address far more frequently than your customers do. You know the business drivers that your solutions impact and the symptoms that verify that your customer’s performance is at risk. You know what to look for and how to help. To determine if those symptoms exist, develop a diagnostic approach to clarify the situation with your customer. Don’t let the customer self diagnose when they don’t clearly understand the problem to be solved. Leverage your experience and become an advisor who helps your customer optimize their performance.

Many salespeople get lost in this truth.  The customer will often attempt to “self-diagnose” and then perform surgery on themselves too.  The reason behind their avoidance of change is straight-forward:

A fundamental element of behavior is that people will change if the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. As a result, customers tend to avoid change and the risks associated with it. They know that making changes to the organization’s operations, systems or processes will be difficult, lengthy, and resource consuming. Why would they personally take on that pressure?

Read the article an you will Thull’s 3 points for repositioning your company for more sales in 2008.

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This BusinessWeek.com article - How to Avoid the Commodity Trap - caught my fancy but I have to admit, it is a bit short on the “How to” part.  The main thrust of the article is to treat your customers with respect.  That is solid advice, but I was looking for more.

But what the article lacks in tactical description, it makes up for with anecdotal stories.  The article is a fun read.  It closes with the author retelling a personal experience:

My last example is personal. Two years ago, I dented my car and took it to a body shop for an estimate. A large tattoo-covered man stood behind the counter. And behind him, on the wall, hung a sign that did not inspire confidence in the respect that this establishment had for its customers. The sign read: “We screw the other guy and pass the savings on to you.” I inquired meekly: “I hope I’m not ‘the other guy’?”

Can you imagine that sign hanging in the lobby of some corporation?  Actually, there are a few companies that I can imagine using that slogan.

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I heard a radio commercial this morning for one of these credit card debt consolidation companies.  The closing line from the commercial:

Must have over $10,000 of credit card debt to qualify.

Qualify?  Exclusivity in a club for which most people would not want to qualify.  Excellent spin.

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From the Website Notes enewsletter from Web Pro News:

Matt Bailey, President of SiteLogic said, “Simply getting more and more numbers to your Web site, is not the answer. It’s getting them to react.”

There are three types of searcher:
1. Specific searcher (Sharp shooter)
2. Concept searcher (Shotgun)
3. Idea searcher (Artillery)

He said writing content is just as important as the design of the content. Content should answer how it will make life easier. Call things what they are and speak in user’s language.

That is a good point about simplicity …a point I think is often lost in websites.  I know we get caught up in our own acronyms and buzzwords.  It is always more valuable to speak in the visitor/prospect/customer’s terms and world than it is to speak in your own terms.  That truth is found in successful selling and successful marketing.

BTW - great description of the 3 types of searchers.

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