Happy New Year, everyone.
90% (or more) of the subscribers you send email to aren't ready to buy today.
Yet, most email marketers optimize strictly for the small group who have purchase intent right now. They send product-focused email after product-focused email and miss the opportunity to build equity with the customers who aren't today's purchasers.
Intent Layering eliminates this problem.
The high-level idea is that every piece of email creative you send delivers value to subscribers with two different types of intent: 1) Purchase-focused subscribers to drive revenue and 2) Experience-focused subscribers to build brand equity.
As it relates to email design, this approach manifests itself as 'layers' in your template.
The first layer is revenue focused and speaks to the purchase-focused subscriber. Product launches, sales, new flavors, collaborations, etc., fit into this bucket. The goal is to drive direct response and capture pent-up demand.
Subsequent layers speak to experience-focused subscribers. These layers trigger dopamine responses from the folks who aren't buying today. By delivering a dopamine hit, we're subconsciously acquiring permission from the subscriber for their time and attention the next time we send.
We're earning future engagement by rewarding today's decision to open.
How do we create these rewards?
Educate your subscribers on a new topic. Share captivating photography/visuals. Make your audience feel like they're part of an exclusive community. Introduce them to a fascinating person they didn't know before.
Be acutely aware of what your audience's interests are. Put those interests before your own.
Annotations create an opportunity to surface your best offers as a “Top Deal” should you land in the Promotions tab. This article walks you through what's currently possible, how Google plans to evolve the feature, and how to configure annotations for your brand.
Learn about annotations⟶
We've spent the last couple of weeks studying how Rejoiner clients approached BFCM this year. Here's what we learned:
The Most Effective Strategy
The brand that posted the most significant revenue numbers on BFCM started its promotion on 11/16. They primed their audience with an early offer and reinvigorated the sale by launching a new product on 11/20. As expected, they reinforced everything with sends on 11/27 and 11/30 as well.
The most surprising takeaway: Their biggest revenue day was launch day on the 16th, by a factor of 2x.
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The Best Subject Lines
Overall, Black Friday broadcasts had higher open rates (16.64% on average) than Cyber Monday (15.49%). Despite lower open rates, we tracked 60% more email attributable revenue on Cyber Monday.
Here were the top-performing subject lines:
The Best Times to Send
Broadcasts sent early morning and late evening eastern standard time had notably higher open rates throughout the holiday than those sent during more typical waking hours.
Editor's Note: This analysis was limited to our client base and factored in broadcast sends only. We excluded all purchase and open rate data from automated journeys during this time to focus strictly on holiday promotional strategy.
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