Guess The Winner III - "Guess Harder"

[directmarketingadvice]

Time for the 3rd installment of "Guess the winner".

Only one thing this time: a subject line split-test from my latest newsletter.

The two subject lines were:

(A) How To Get Your Ads 80% Right

and

(B) The Secret to Writing Powerful Headlines

Whch one had a 25.2% higher open rate?

Let's hear your guesses.

Steve

[Matt1959]

my answer "A" reason being its very punchy, straight to the point about something specific and 80% comes across as honest (worth looking at) because most would say 99% or 100%.

Waiting to be shot down later:redface:

[Snippa]

I'm just the opposite! I would say The Secret to Writing Powerful Headlines because people seem to love those secrets and EVERYONE wants more power! ;)

[Dawg]

B


(Just because I have to use more letters: I wonder if '"The Secrets to Writing Powerful Headlines" would beat 25.2%)

[Tw Installations]

Well A is specific But Im going to say B as the correct answer,

The word secret makes me want to open it up

Probably wrong though

Tommy

[cjd]

'The secrets of', surely?

Dunno, personally anything that has a spurious decimal point in a headline get me pressing the delete button.

[dots and spots Jeff]

Another one for 'B' - its the word secret that does it for me.

[Matt1959]

this looks like being a good one! Steve, dont call it in too quickly:)

[directmarketingadvice]

It's an interesting discussion. Long may it continue.

Once it starts petering out, I'll post the answer.

Steve

[Cornish Steve]

Having learned (hopefully) from your previous examples, I will choose option A - the reason being that A is more specific whereas B sounds like the title of a book.

[sm1]

Seems like a close one for 2 separate reasons, but I guess the percentage helped A :)

[Tej]

B for me...

A sounds like a "losers" thinking.. why would anyone want to get their ads only 80% right.

[Dawg]

Only one thing this time: a subject line split-test from my latest newsletter.




Steve

Just had a look at that mail in my morning clearout. The click through rate will surely have been affected by:


The fact it is from Steve Gibson
The argument posed by the Ogilvy statement
The click thro' title being 'secret to writing powerful headlines', (even where the email headline was 'How to get your ads 80% right')


Essentially the test is not an either/or contest between the two headlines, with the 3 points above probably substantially affecting the click thro'.

"B would win anyway"...-Bruce 'Dawg' Willis
:)

[Frankus]

B for me...

A sounds like a "losers" thinking.. why would anyone want to get their ads only 80% right.

I agree. This implies that, to get your ads 80% right, they are also 20% wrong.

Who wants to put out 'wrong' ads, no mater by how many percent?

[directmarketingadvice]

Just had a look at that mail in my morning clearout. The click through rate will surely have been affected by:


The fact it is from Steve Gibson
The argument posed by the Ogilvy statement
The click thro' title being 'secret to writing powerful headlines', (even where the email headline was 'How to get your ads 80% right')


Essentially the test is not an either/or contest between the two headlines, with the 3 points above probably substantially affecting the click thro'.

Clickthrough, yes. The Ogilvy comment and the text in the link in the email would affect those, but they wouldn't affect the open rates.

The fact it's from me would affect the open rates, but that's a constant.

Steve

PS I'll let this run until this afternoon and then give the answer.

[dots and spots Jeff]

B for me...

A sounds like a "losers" thinking.. why would anyone want to get their ads only 80% right.

A good point - but to me it conveyed more honesty than the 'secrets of' which struck me as a little ... I'm not sure, not quite spammy, but whiffed a little of some many of the snakeoil sales you come across on the web.

However, despite the above, I still think B will turn out to be the winner. (After all, we all love a secret!)

[Matt1959]

I'm guessing the main point here is that when looking at your inbox you have a split second to decide whether somethings worth opening or not. I mean you don't spend 10 seconds or even 5 seconds analysing the headline before opening it so I still think A is the one and I think its the 80% that is key here. Like Steve said, B could be about anything - a book, an ad, a newspaper piece whereas A is very specific and as these mails go to business owners, A is more therefore more relevant to them. I do hope I'm right after all that:)

[directmarketingadvice]

We've had 10 votes and the voting seems to have slowed down, so I'll put you out your misery.

Your votes were:

A: 3 votes

B: 7 votes.

The winner was (drumroll): A

So congrats to Cornish Steve, Stefan and, especially, Matt.

(who came up with some good reasons why A should win)

And thanks to all the B fans who took the time to give their answers.

Prior to the test, I expcted A to win. My reasons were:

(A) It was unusual (why just 80%?) and, from the tests I run before, unusual subject lines with a benefit tend to get higher open rates than straight benefit subject lines.

(B) The use of a precise number makes it seem more real.

(C) It doesn't promise perfection, only 80%. Promises with a "flaw" tend to seem more real.

I remembered reading an interview with Gary Bencivenga where he told the story:

You’re usually much better with an under-promising headline. A great example that I learned in the days that I was working with Dan Rosenthal was for one of our clients who sold gold and silver coins and bullion. In this case it was an ad for silver. The headline was a famous headline that ran for many years, “Why the price of silver may rise steeply.” Thinking I was such a hot-shot copywriter, I said to Dan Rosenthal, who I believe was the author of that headline and the great, great ad that followed it, I said, “Why are you saying, ‘may rise’? You should test a headline that sounds a little stronger, a little bolder, such as ‘Why the price of silver will rise steeply.’ That way it sounds, Dan, like you believe what you’re predicting.”

So we tested my version and, of course, it bombed. It’s counterintuitive, but “Why the price of silver may rise steeply” outperformed “Why the price of silver will rise steeply” maybe by 200%. And the body copy was exactly the same for both versions. It went into why inflation and why a silver shortage is about to exert irresistible pressure under the price of silver to cause silver prices to go higher. It gave every reason why silver was going up. It was full of proof and full of facts and full of figures, plus an opportunity to send for a booklet on how you can profit on the coming rise in silver prices. As I say, it created land office business on the strength of that ad but I could never understand why “may rise” pulled so much better than the more forceful “will rise.”

But it’s because of that disbelief factor. Most investors are savvy. So as soon as you promise something that really is unknowable such as “will rise,” they know that you can’t predict the future. But when you build in a little bit of understatement, you suck them right in.

Hopefully this thread was interesting.

Anyone have any comments?

Steve

[sarah844]

There is also the fact that if you thought 80% of your ads would be successful, well, wouldn't everybody want that? For a lot of people much of their advertising fails miserably so an 80% guarantee or claim would be very attractive i'd have thought.

[Tej]

Nice to know.. thanks.

[admagic]

Time for the 3rd installment of "Guess the winner".

Only one thing this time: a subject line split-test from my latest newsletter.

The two subject lines were:

(A) How To Get Your Ads 80% Right

and

(B) The Secret to Writing Powerful Headlines

Whch one had a 25.2% higher open rate?

Let's hear your guesses.

Steve

Pity I missed it.

I think I would have chosen a/ because b/ sounds like typical marketing standard trite stuff. Not unique, personal or unusual - b/ triggers the "spam filter" in your reading, not because you think you are going to be sold stuff, but because you expect to hear something you already know.

a/ is also ambiguous english to the extent it doesnt tell you whether it means
"right 80% of the time" or "80% of the advert right" ...so the very curiosity makes you wonder what it is about, and since it is couched in an unusual way, make you think it could be new...

So I think it is the "Why bother with Old hat" filter at work..from the more sophisticated end of your client base.

so if you test the headline

An Unusual Secret to Writing Powerful Headlines

you may see the results flip round...

[awebapart.com]

b/ triggers the "spam filter" in your reading
Good point!

I was also about to make a similar but separate point that if one mailshot is slightly more spammy than the other mailshot, how would your experiment know whether some real spam filters aren't kicking in for one of the mailshots, and thus reducing the numbers of emails that arrived OK in the recipient's mailbox, and conversions that way too.

It is very difficult to know when some real spam filters will kick in. You cannot rely on return receipts (not everyone acknowledges a receipt) or bounce backs (not every spam filter will bounce back) or even image loads in emails (not every recipient will allow images to load in their email) to give you an accurate idea of what emails have been received OK or read. Some emails might be received but have something like "[?? Probable Spam]" appended to the start of the title by the spam filter.

So it is possible that a more spammy version of a newsletter converts less, not just because of the human reaction to it, but because of the automated spam filter reaction to it, even if the human reaction might put it more in a positive light. Sometimes the test might be tainted by a subtle word that isn't obviously spammy, e.g. the old example where "specialist" used to cause problems with some spam filters because it had the word "cialis" (a viagra like drug name) in it.

If real spam filters are affecting results, then the tests are still valid since they indicate what works better in an email marketing channel overall (delivery to recipient, and human reaction), but what can be deduced from the test shouldn't always be applied in other non-email areas, like web page headlines, since the email tests results might not be completely down to human reaction.