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First, a bit of email marketing statistics, courtesy of
Aweber. And secondly, an article on the importance of web page titles. Choosing
meaningful titles is a simple website marketing strategy that is often
overlooked.
Hope you enjoy this newsletter,
Henriette
Delivery of email newsletters:
statistics
Aweber that delivers my newsletter made available interesting
statistics. These are based on the last 30 days and include
12,561 Aweber customers using an opt-in newsletter list.
Open rate
The average open rate of HTML and Text/HTML newsletters is 29.7%.
(Well, I must be out of the norm. Thanks to you, my open rate is much higher
than that and is usually over 100%s with subscribers forwarding the newsletter
to colleagues and friends. This must compensate for the unopened ones!)
Sunday generates the highest average open rate of 41.1%, followed by Saturday at
36.7%.
(This trend goes against many other
researches! This indicates that their clients' target market would probably be
individuals and home-based businesses rather than office workers.)
| Average Open
Rate by Sent Date: (higher is better) |
| Sunday |
41.1% |
| Saturday |
36.7% |
| Friday |
32.8% |
| Thursday |
24.6% |
| Wednesday |
34.0% |
| Tuesday |
29.6% |
| Monday |
23.2% |
Deliverable rate
-
99.34% of all email was delivered successfully.
-
0.66% of all email was undeliverable (mailbox closed, non-existent user, etc.).
Sunday generates the fewest undeliverable bounces at 0.36% for newsletters sent
on that date.
|
Average Undeliverable Rate by Sent Date: (lower is better) |
| Sunday |
0.36% |
| Saturday |
0.45% |
| Friday |
0.47% |
| Thursday |
0.56% |
| Wednesday |
0.77% |
| Tuesday |
0.83% |
| Monday |
0.88% |
Plain text messages generate the fewest undeliverable bounces
at 0.46%. Mime format Text/HTML follows at 0.56% and HTML only messages have a
whopping 1.09% undeliverable rate. This is why Aweber recommends to always send a plain text alternative with
HTML formatted messages.
Most popular day
Monday is the most popular day of the week for customers to
send their newsletters with 17.1% of newsletters being sent.
|
Percentage of newsletters sent by days |
| Sunday |
9.0% |
| Saturday |
10.3% |
| Friday |
14.5% |
| Thursday |
16.2% |
| Wednesday |
15.8% |
| Tuesday |
17.0% |
| Monday |
17.1% |
Subject line personalisation
Subject line personalisation using the date generated an average open
rate of 51.4% compared to personalization using the subscriber's first
name generating 40.9% open rate. Newsletters sent without
personalization of any type in the subject line generated average open
rates of 28.9%.
17% of customer newsletter subject lines sent in the last 30 days
contained date personalization while 19% used the subscriber's first
name. 56.3% of subject lines did not contain any type of
personalization. Interestingly, using the subscriber's full name or
last name generated lower average open rates at 20%.Statistics
courtesy of Aweber.
Web page titles to promote your website
Are you missing out on a simple, no-cost website marketing strategy? By assigning
meaningful and effective titles to your web pages, you can boost your search
engine ranking, increase brand exposure and differentiate your listing from
competitors in search engine results and bookmark lists.
What is a web page title?
A web page title is the name you give to each of your web pages and is inserted
in the HTML tag <title> located in the HEAD of the document.
Importance of web page titles
-
Brand exposure
The web page title is displayed in the browser window title bar. And when printed,
the page title will appear at the top of the page. People will be exposed to
your brand each time they view a page from your site and also be reminded of you
if they print your information.
Title for my homepage:
- Search engine ranking
Web page titles weigh heavily in the search engine ranking equation. Use different titles
for your web pages to increase the number of opportunities to rank on search
engine results e.g.:
Page title using the title of an article
(extra keywords: branding, favicons)
Title for my ‘About us’ page
(extra keywords: Henriette Martel-Lawson, Perth,
website strategist)
- Listing on search engine results
The page title is usually used as the heading for your web page listing on the
search engine results. Relevant and useful headings will guide qualified visitors
to your site.
- Bookmark and history entries
The page title is used as the default entry in favorites (bookmarks) and history
lists. It provides a direct link for repeat visitors.
  
Web page title strategies
- Make sure each web page has a title. Otherwise your web page will be part of
the thousands anonymous listings ‘Untitled Document’ in search engine results.
- Use meaningful titles especially on pages more likely to be bookmarked. This
will help jogging people’s memory for when they scan entries in their bookmark
list.
- Keep your title relatively short to fit in browser title bars and search engine listings
to avoid being snipped off.
- Write title relevant to your web page to attract qualified leads from search
engine results.
Avoid
- Fillers e.g. ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’. When possible, replace them with keywords
that will better your chances of high ranking on search engine results.
- Redundant words e.g. 'Home', Homepage' and ‘Welcome to'. Use
keywords instead of these useless words. If bookmarked, a page title
starting with 'Welcome' could end
up last in an ascending alphabetical list.
- Sensational sales messages e.g. ‘First Best Diet Pill’. Outrageous claims are
viewed as blatant commercial messages that lack credibility.
- Strings of keywords e.g.
‘Marketing - Marketing Strategy - Marketing Plan - Marketing...’ Such listing
looks like a directory listing and not a credible web page with information.
Are your web page titles optimised?
© 2005 Henriette Martel-Lawson.
No reprints rights for this article.
 Book review
200 Marketing Ideas for Your Website
by Henriette Martel-Lawson
"After studying more than 2,000
websites, Martel-Lawson comes up with marketing trends and strategies that work
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ideas to our own domains.
"The book’s 200 ideas cover plenty of territory, including visuals and sound
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"Busy communicators owe Henriette Martel-Lawson for saving us countless hours by
pointing directly to leading-edge sites that work from a marketing perspective."
Full review
Marketing Update-News from the Australian Marketing Institute
More information about
200 Marketing
Ideas for Your Website.
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