in your marketing sometimes you have to do something to kind shake your prospect out of their daydream state as they scan their e-mail. Here is what I mean.
We are working with a computer repair guy and we ran a test with his list. We split his list in half and sent 2 copies of the same e-mail but with 2 separate headlines as a test.
One was a somewhat normal headline while the other one was a little more aggressive. The goal was to see just how the list would react and to see if having a shocking headline in your marketing still worked.
The result? Well, close to half of the segmented list that received the shocking headline opened and responded to the e-mail some even going as far as to complain about it, while the normal headline got less than half of its targeted readership to open and respond.
So, what can we learn from this? that shock value still works. Meaning that if you can try and slip something in to your marketing that will surprise and even shock your market in to doing something. Now this does not mean that you need to abuse this, because if you do it to much or to often, it will lose its effect but if you can, try and wake up your market.
In my next post I will go in to the reasons why I believe that having a shock value marketing piece still works and how best to use it.