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The following is an extract from our new e-book on digital marketing. Download the whole thing free now.

The Subject Line Best Practices Article of Your Dreams

The most important part of an email is making sure it gets opened! And as they say, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression so you have to make sure your ‘from line’ and ‘subject line’ are in great shape. These are the first things subscribers will see in their inbox so you need to make sure they are compelling, and make the subscriber want to open it. A bad subject line and from line can cause your email to get caught in spam filters, make your leads unsubscribe and stop people opening it. The ‘from line’ is very simple to make perfect; it should just be your brand name, simple as that.

The following guidelines give several ideas as to how to optimise your subject line;

1. An email subject line should be like a call to action and should start with a verb such as ‘learn’. ‘download’, or ‘sign up’.
2. Subject lines must relate to the content inside the email! This may sound obvious, but it is often the case that the actual content of the email ends up have nothing to do with the subject line! This is usually because the sender is trying to write such an attractive subject line that what is actually in the email is forgotten!
3. The call to action used in the email subject line should be repeated in the email copy.
4. Use your brand name in the subject line. A recent study from Mailchimp found that emails were more likely to be opened if they included the company’s name in it.
5. Make sure you include the email’s offer in the subject line, so people know the value the email will provide them e.g. “Discover how one business doubles their revenue using social media”
6. Creating a sense of urgency is a good tactic to use in conjunction with a compelling offer. One way to do this is to use brackets in the subject line. For example, you might be promoting an upcoming webinar and you want to make sure recipients realise this right away. Your subject line could be, “Learn to Become an Efficient Blogger with Curve Interactive [Webinar in 2 Days]”.
7. As mentioned earlier you cannot afford to have your emails get caught up in spam filters. To give yourself the best chance do not use spammy words like ‘free’, ‘act now’ and ‘offer’. Also do not have all your words in capital letters or over use exclamation marks!!!!!
8. I recommend keeping your subject line under 50 characters if possible. Having anything longer you run the risk of words being cut off. Each email client shows a different number of characters varying from 30 to over 80 but most show around the 45-50 character mark. If your email system allows it then try to do a split-test on a subject line.  Test 2 very different subject lines against each other on a subset of the database and then set the main bulk of emails to be sent using the better performing subject line – usually based on Open rate.  Take on board the learnings and then test again the next time around.
9. Make sure the first few lines of your email copy are highly related to the subject line. Most email clients have a preview function which pulls out the first couple of lines of text, if this is consistent to what the email says and reinforces its points readers will have more reason to open it.

To learn more useful email best practices download our digital marketing e-book now!

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By Josh Hamit @hamit

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Facebook (March, 2013) has announced in that it is set to change the design of the News Feed page (again!). However, unlike other drastic changes to the Facebook layout, this redesign hasn’t caused any major upsets… yet!

The new design is now much more photo-centric and on the face of things looks a lot less cluttered. The left panel has been completely redesigned and is very similar to the left panel seen on the Facebook mobile application. The right panel has also been made narrower, leaving a lot more space for the News Feed content. In short, the new design does look like an improvement.

Chris Cox of Facebook has stated that the main reason behind the redesign is to make sure user content is shown off in the best possible fashion. The Facebook team believe this is best achieved by reducing the clutter around user content. In essence, the redesign is trying to move Facebook out the way as much as possible.

New options have been added to the News Feed so users can filter content based on categories such as Music, Photos, Pages, Games and Close friends or their own custom categories.

For business’s advertising on the platform it has been confirmed that the redesign will allow “richer and bigger” Sponsored Posts (adverts). The redesign gives marketers a larger canvas to work with and the ability to make their paid adverts appear in specific News Feed categories. For example, Nintendo may want their adverts to appear only in the Games tab. Choosing to do this Nintendo will be able to target their adverts specifically to an audience that are looking at a related subject.

Read more →

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Heath Farm Fostercare

• Web design, build and analytics
• Content creation
• E-campaign and adverts
• Print design and production

In August 2012, Acorn Care and Education approached Curve Interactive to help raise awareness of fostering and acquire new foster carers at Heath Farm in Kent, which also runs a school for children with complex emotional and behavioural issues.

What we did

Research and strategic input

• Reviewed and analysed existing online and offline marketing
• To avoid confusion and cater for two distinct audiences, we recommended to split Heath Farm’s website into two distinct sites – one for fostering, the other for the special school
• To attract more fostering enquiries, we made a strategic recommendation to promote fostering as a viable career and shift peoples’ perception on what’s involved (it’s often perceived as a voluntary occupation). This led to us purchasing a new domain ‘myfostercareer.org’

Content creation

• Researched the content for online and offline marketing by interviewing foster carers and staff – including motivations to foster, more information about the children, vital practical information, benefits of fostering with Heath Farm, and frequently asked questions
• Researched and wrote foster carer’s real stories to be used across all marketing
• Established a ‘tone-of-voice’ for Heath Farm Fostering – welcoming, friendly and reassuring

Design and build of website

• Produced sitemap and customer journeys for the website
• Designed a clear and concise design with strong calls to actions and signposting throughout
• Developed the site in Word Press CMS to allow for easy editing of the content by the client
• Optimised the website for organic seach
• Implemented tracking to allow for clear measurement and reporting

 Printed marketing materials

• Planned, wrote and designed a 20 page brochure, folder and tri-fold leaflet  – drawing on established branding and new copy and positioning
• Arranged cost-effective printing Read more →

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Curve Interactive is a full service marketing agency that specialises in integrated marketing campaigns.

We believe marketing should delight and stimulate great customer experiences across all media channels. Our ability to deliver superb value to you and your customers is something we pride ourselves on and is something we seek to improve every day.

Having said that, first and foremost we believe marketing is about generating results. Using the latest marketing techniques we are able to track and measure every penny of your marketing spend. And from this we are able to learn exactly what is working for you and how we can refine and improve it further.

Our dedicated team of marketing experts thrive on creating marketing campaigns that go above and beyond all expectations.

We create marketing results that measure up – and that’s why we exist.

A selection of our services include;

• Marketing strategy
• Website development
• Search engine optimisation
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Print
• Film and video
• Display ads

Since our humble beginnings in 2007, we have worked our with some of the best business’s around, including 3M, BSkyB, RAC, PruHealth, the BBC and Oxford University to name but a few. We also work closely with a number of local start-ups and smaller businesses and since we’ve opened a new office in Tunbridge Wells we have seen local business grow. Read more →