The job of your Preheader is like envelope teasers – get the darn thing opened!

Bad news, friends. According to Christopher Lester in Target Marketing Magazine, subscribers spend less than three to four seconds deciding whether or not to open your email.

And because up to 75 percent of folks first read email on their mobile devices, it's all too easy for them to swipe and delete without a second thought. The good news? Email marketers have another tool to grab subscribers' attention: preheader text.

What are preheaders and why should we care?

Lester explains that Preheader text is the slightly grayed-out text that shows up after the subject line when checking emails in your Gmail account or on your phone. It's common to put a lot of thought into what's inside your email, but you also need to pay the same level of attention to your preheader text because:

1.      People increasingly preview your emails in a browser setting so the preheader is the first thing they will read after your subject line.

2.      Up to 30% of business people have their images turned off, so having a preheader allows you to have a compelling message, even if the images do not load.

In other words, the preheader can act like the “teaser” on an envelope – and its entire job is to get the recipient to open the email!

Repeat after me:  The preheader is not an excuse to repeat the subject line.

Too often, marketers make the mistake of using preheader text to repeat or restate the subject line. This doesn't add value for readers, so use the preheader to give them something fresh that will catch their eye.

Below are some great preheader tips shared by Preheader tips from Target Marketing Magazine:

1. Tease the Content of Your Email
Sometimes email subject lines are less than perfect. The nice thing about preheader text is that it gives you another chance to encourage readers to open your email. Use it to capture the main point of your email with some compelling, eye-catching copy.

2. Provide a Strong Call to Action
Your preheader text can be a great place to include your call to action and create a sense of urgency. It will encourage your subscribers to open right away, before they get distracted by the compilation of cat gifs their friends just sent.

3. Elaborate on the Subject Line
In general, the shorter the subject line, the better it performs. Preheader text allows you to add some context while keeping your subject line length in that attention-grabbing sweet spot.

4. Write a Personal Message
A personalized note in your preheader text mirrors what your readers see when they get emails from friends and family. Plus it's subtle, so it's less likely to offend those folks who might be turned off by personalized subject lines.

5. Give an Incentive to Open
It's no secret that people sign up to email lists because they expect to get something valuable in return. Hit them with that deal or exclusive content right away and watch your open rates soar.

6. Keep It Short
The length varies depending on the email client, but to be safe, we recommend keeping it under 75 characters.

7. A/B Test
Every audience is different. Test variations of your preheader text to learn what resonates best with your subscribers.

In a MarketingSherpa case study, Edible Arrangements used customer service to increase sales.  The e-commerce team increased same-day delivery orders on the Web 8% with simple promotion in a handful of channels (Sutton, 2013).    Who is Edible Arrangements? Edible Arrangements (www.ediblearrangements.com) has been offering same-day delivery for its fruit baskets, fruit bouquets and other sweet gifts for more than a decade. While they had extended the deadline for same-day orders to 5 p.m. a few years ago, only to the people knew about it. "It's kind of our hidden gem," said Kaitlin Reiss, Vice President of E-commerce, Edible Arrangements International. "A lot of people don't realize that we have same-day delivery, even though it is not something new for us, so we realize that we still need to do even more to promote it." (Sutton, 2013) Same-day service is not an option for every company or even every franchise location. Edible Arrangements has more than 1,100 storefronts worldwide, which makes it easier to expedite local deliveries. Most stores offer the 5 p.m. deadline for same-day orders. Some go even later, Reiss said, but the extension was impossible at some locations. The team chose to make 5 p.m. the standard to attract business from commuters who might want to pick up an order on the way home (Sutton, 2013). Because their consumer is changing, there are a lot more last-minute orders, so the company wanted to make sure that they were available when consumers needed a last minute birthday, anniversary, or any other special occasion gift (Sutton, 2013). When the ecommerce team decided to focus on promoting this offer, they achieved the following impressive results as reported by Sutton of Marketing Sherpa:  · 8% increase in same-day orders on its website since promoting the service · Slightly higher open rate and average order value for emails with same-day messaging The MarketingSherpa case study provides an excellent case study of how the team raised awareness and increased their orders and highlights 2 major contributing tactics:

1.  Promoted the Offer on the website

Before Edible Arrangements spread the word, it promoted the service on its website to reinforce the message to visitors. This was done primarily on the homepage with a countdown timer. The timer ticks down the hours and minutes each visitor has left to place an order for same-day delivery. The counter adjusts for each visitor's time zone and uses 5 p.m. as a universal deadline. 

They used a timer and not a clock. The timer is expressed more in words than digits. Below the top portion of the homepage — which has a logo, navigation bar and search box — visitors are greeted with large text that clearly expresses the offer:

"Want it in today? Order in the next [X] hours and [X] minutes."

The image below shows the countdown clock and can be found at: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/heap/cs/ediblearrangements/1.htm

 2.      Provided Instant Gratification

Edible Arrangements also incorporated a display ad on their own home page that hovers over the right portion of the homepage's "hero shot" shows a graphic of a speeding truck and the words "Instant Gratification" in large capital letters. Below in smaller text is this message: "Same-day delivery is our specialty." The image below shows the “hero shot” and can be found at

 http://www.marketingsherpa.com/heap/cs/ediblearrangements/1.htm

 Testing the ads

The timer and the graphic have been tested to help optimize clickthrough rates, Reiss said. For example they tested a textual format of the timer against a digital format (i.e., "12:00"). In additional, the "Instant gratification" message was tested against copy that emphasized the company’s refrigerated delivery trucks (Sutton, 2013).

Promotion off page helped raise awareness as well

While the promotion on the homepage helped Edible Arrangements connect with current customers and prospects, they went one step further and included social media as well. The team has active profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest. It occasionally mentions the same-day service in posts, hoping to catch the interest of someone who has put off gift shopping for too long. They also run ads on search engines and websites. Soon, the team will test messaging to promote the same-day service in the PPC and display ad networks it uses (Sutton, 2013).

Using Web Analytics
The headline conveys a clear deadline and message. It creates a sense of urgency for the consumer that can overcome inertia and gets the prospect to act immediately. Seeing the tangible time available in a simple headline is enough to get your attention. Providing the “Instant Gratification” image and offer on the right side of the homepage also helps reinforce the service as a differentiator in the market for gifts and arrangements (Sutton, 2013). 

Edible Arrangements understands that transaction data is a vital piece of information when analyzing online business performance (Wells, 2013). They also appreciate that while promoting customer service is a vital differentiation, revenue is much more tangible to many business owners and being able to report an 8% increase in same day sales is a solid metric. In order to report this revenue and order metric, Edible Arrangements must be utilizing ecommerce web analytics on their website. Having the e-commerce data in your web analytics application makes it easier to perform the analysis and also provides quantitative results on their testing. This has allowed Edible Arrangements to test different ads and ad copy, and optimize the offer that provides the best results in terms of click throughs and ultimate orders.

Visiting the web site at www.ediblearrangements.com showed that the Immediate Gratification “hero shot” was still present, but the time clock was no longer there. Using their metrics, Edible Arrangements would be able to see if the 8% increase in same day sales held up over time, or if the offer turned out to not have staying power. The fact that it no longer occupied the main headline would infer that they had used their web analytics to test out of this offer. 

In researching their website, I spent a considerable amount of time on the home page and after approximately 2 minutes the following prompt below appeared from http://www.ediblearrangements.com/fruit-baskets.aspx?ArrangementID=2174:

This shows that Edible Arrangements is tracking time on site for visitors and is prompting consumers who linger for a specific amount of time to provide additional information that can be captured in their database, while also promoting the next step in the conversion funnel. It could be assumed that through web analytics, the company has found that consumers who enter their Zip Code and the Date that they are looking to send their gift is a logical path to conversion. By providing this prompt, Edible Arrangements can capture higher ecommerce conversions. Additional web metrics tools to consider

Edible Arrangements also provides an “order by phone” option on the site. They should consider adding a call tracker tool that allows them to track phone orders that originated from their website such as Easy Call Tracker.This would be an excellent way to add additional analytics and measurement to their ecommerce results. Jane Clinton, WVU IMC Master’s Student provides a few of the Easy Call Tracker options as including:

Dynamic Call Tracking: This is the basic, traditional way of tracking phone calls. It uses a specified phone number for a campaign and integrates reporting data to Google Analytics

Visitor ID Tracking: This option can use existing phone numbers. You must add a widget to the website to display a six-digit Visitor ID. When a person calls, the call center asks the caller for the Visitor ID number and connects the transaction with the visitor profile in Google Analytics. As a result the order can be tracked through the entire transaction process.

Click to Call: Visitors click a link on the website to have a customer service representative call them. The unique visitor ID can be tracked.

Attribution Solution: This is for companies that require an offline (phone) purchase with an online confirmation.

Lastly, Edible Arrangements could incorporate retargeting tools to help them with consumers who leave the site without making a purchase, by serving up a banner ad to get them to return and place an order.

References:
Clinton, J. (2014, February 21, 2014) Easy Call Tracker. Discussion Week 7. Retrieved February 24, 2014 from: www.ecampus.wvu.edu
Countdown headline. Retrieved February 23, 2014 from: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/heap/cs/ediblearrangements/1.htm

Edible Arrangements Retrieved February 23, 2014 from: www.ediblearrangements.com

Hero Shot web page. Retrieved February 23, 2014 from: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/heap/cs/ediblearrangements/1.htm

Sutton, A. (2013, October 24) Ecommerce: Edible Arrangements Countdown Ad Lifts Same Day Orders 8%. Retrieved February 23, 2014 from: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/countdown-ad-ecommerce-same-day-orders

Wells, M. (2013, October 21) Lesson 7: Advanced Google Analytics. Retrieved February 22, 2014 from: www.ecampus.wvu.edu

Is Google the Evil Empire or a Benevolent Monopoly?

Wells reminds us that Google owns

• The top-ranked search portal
• A wildly popular e-mail service
• A leading feed reader
• The top-ranked feed management system
• The top-ranked analytics product
• The largest distributed ad network
• The most widely-distributed traffic monitoring toolbar 
• The largest video content hosting site

With the ubiquity of Google in all of these forms across the digital world, they now collect data from millions of its accounts every day (Wells, 2014) which creates a double edged sword for this behemoth that can be summed up in these two quotes:

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton)

and

Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. (Robert Caro)

Whether we view Google as the evil empire or the benevolent monopoly depends on your perspective, and can be argued both ways. But it does beg the bigger question:

Since Google has ultimate power, are they capable of protecting consumer privacy and can a private enterprise be held to a higher standard in society?

THE EVIL EMPIRE

Recent news stories would suggest that Google may not be conducting business for the common good. According to Eric K. Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School Google definitely falls into the camp of abuse of power:

“Power corrupts. I don't know if absolute power corrupts absolutely, but it certainly provides the opportunity for some pretty spectacular abuses. Absolute power also provides mechanisms for hiding your abuses, or at least provides some mechanisms for avoiding significant punishment. Bank robbers go to jail; after the major DOJ "drug smuggling scandal" Google was allowed to return the profits it illegally obtained in exchange for having all the DOJ's evidence sealed. This is a much better deal than the treatment offered others who might be guilty of repeated felonies (Clemons,2011)”.

Professor Clemons states that Google Analytics (GA) violates EU laws on the privacy of data regarding individuals since the product reports back to Google the IP address of all visitors to these businesses, allowing Google to track the Internet traffic of individuals all over the world, regardless of whether they, or these businesses, had agreed to this tracking. This practice has been ruled illegal in Germany, and there is also other functionality within GA that utilizes behavioral tracking without obtaining prior consent from all visitors to their website (Clemons, 2011).

However; Professor Clemons goes even further in his concerns over Google and its overreaching strategy:

“The company's new privacy policy goes beyond anything the world has seen before, in which Google asserts the right to combine all the information it can obtain from any sources, including those never authorized by the provider, like the sender of email to a Gmail account … Somehow, the combination of no adult supervision, unlimited access to private information, and a sequence of questionable behavior causes me to wonder if Google's present governance model may simply be unacceptable” (Clemons, 2011).

Mike Schuster, writing in the USA Today, also expressed concerns regarding Google’s intentions after the recent acquisition of Nest saying “If you were already worried about the scope of Google's data mining, news of a recent buyout may have you ready to rip that glowing thermostat from your wall” (Schuster, 2014). But there may also be more disconcerting behavior beneath the surface. Privacy advocates are concerned about Google's involvement with devices that already monitor consumer behavior and presence. For example, Schuster says that the Nest thermostat has a motion sensor which activates the screen and changes temperature settings when it registers someone walking past. This has caused some privacy advocates to worry about what Google could potentially do with this kind of personal information that has been stored in the Nest product (Schuster, 2014).

THE BENEVOLENT MONOPOLY

On the other side of the argument are those who feel that with supreme power comes the opportunity to do great things. In addition, society’s definition of privacy has changed vastly in recent years. We live in an age increasingly shaped by our attitudes to, and our definition of, privacy and in many ways our changing relationship with technology is at the heart of this. In reviewing the privacy controversies of the last few years, Jemima Kiss reclassifies the argument as an "inversion of privacy" and not an “invasion of privacy (Kiss, 2014).  Writing in The Guardian, she states that the boundary between the public and the private is porous and one person might be happy to over share baby photos publicly, while another person would be loath to being included in a Facebook semi-public "friend" discussion (Kiss, 2014).

As privacy and our willingness to share in a connected world is being redefined, Google is simply acting as a facilitator of consumer behavior. When challenged, Eric Schmidt of Google reassures us that Google relies on trust and when you lose that trust, Google stands to potentially lose the consumer (Kiss, 2014). But just as privacy is no longer absolute in today’s age, neither is trust. We find different levels of appropriate privacy and, as consumers, we need to decide for ourselves if we can trust a company enough to give it precious data about ourselves.

So, certainly, if absolute power provides both the ability to commit spectacular abuses and the ability to hide them, then absolute power demands absolute integrity (Clemons, 2011). It may however be too much to ask our institutions to protect public interest while forwarding private gain. When this happens and the lines become blurred, we will need serious oversight including internal corporate governance matched with governmental or regulatory overview.

THE BOTTOM LINE

While Google Analytics itself may not fall within the guidelines and EU restrictions, companies using Google Analytics can still stay within the EU laws by being more transparent to their end users. Optanon provides ICO guidance that says: "If the information collected about website use is passed to a third party you should make this absolutely clear to the user.  You should review what this third party does with the information about your website visitors." Therefore in the instance of "benchmarking" it is clear consent must be achieved for a website to pass information to Google”(http://www.cookielaw.org/google-analytics-eu-cookie-law).

When an all-powerful company acts honorably, then regulation can be done without a heavy hand, and without being especially intrusive. But if the company demonstrably has failed in its own oversight, by demonstrably violating cultural, ethical, and legal norms, then it's time for more serious government intervention (Clemson, 2012).

Google sits at a fulcrum in their history where they need to choose which side of the great divide they want to embrace. Battling the Department of Justice in a flagrant violation of privacy violates our trust, but they can also use their power to do tremendous good for society in the name of freedom of speech and knowledge sharing.  

I hope that Google will take the advice of the sage Bob Dylan:

"But to live outside the law, you must be honest
I know you always say that you agree"

Want to learn more? Visit these references:

Optanon. Google Analytics EU Cookie Law. Retrieved February 17, 2014 from: http://www.cookielaw.org/google-analytics-eu-cookie-law/

Clemons, E., Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School "Say It Ain't So, Joe, Again, and Again, and Again ...": A Legacy of Continued Bad Behavior at Google. from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-k-clemons/google-privacy-case_b_1522874.html

Clemons, E. & Wilson J. (2012, October 9) Can Google Influence an Election? Retrieved February 17, 2014 from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-k-clemons/google-election-2012_b_1952725.html

Bob Dylan, "Absolutely Sweet Marie," Copyright © 1966 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1994 by Dwarf Music. Retrieved February 16, 2014 from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-k-clemons/google-privacy-case_b_1522874.html

Kiss, J. (2014, February 8) Worried about your privacy? Wait until the drones start stalking you. Google's Street View and Facebook push the private into the public. Now watch out for tiny flying cameras. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/09/privacy-concerns-google-streetview-facebook-drones

Lord Acton Quote. Retrieved February 16, 2014 from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/power_corrupts.html

Mike Schuster (2014, January 16). After Google's acquisition of Nest, privacy advocates are weary of what Google will do next. Retrieved February 17, 2014 from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/01/16/google-acquires-nest-privacy/4518317/

Robert Caro Quote. Retrieved February 16, 2014 from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/power_corrupts.html#LhtFCb3LDfWZApux.99