E-Mail Applied: Change the Subject

I like the way the cataloger Wine Enthusiast approaches this. Its marketing head likens a subject line to a catalog cover. Catalogers know the cover makes a big difference to sales — a subject line performs the same function.

Wine Enthusiast’s e-mail copywriter comes up with 10 suggested subject lines. The marketing team reviews them and sometimes comes up with additional ideas. Once marketing pares the list down to a few winners, the team takes a quarter of the file to do an A/B or A/B/C test.