What does the 1st Line of your Email Newsletter Say to iPhone Users?

Everyone knows your Subject Line is important in composing an email. But for iPhone users so are the first couple of lines of each email. I captured this screen with a couple of different marketing emails. Note most squander that free real estate with "Click to View Online" messages. Best Buy on the bottom does an okay job but even they waste a line.

Think about the 1st line of your email newsletter and how it appears to iPhone users.

80% of Press Release Headlines Too Long for Google

Are you optimizing your press release headlines? Schwartz MSL Research Group hA put together a study on the SEO of press release headlines using data from Business Wire releases. One important finding is that Google only displays roughly 65 characters in their search results and therefore releases with headlines 70 characters or under are best optimized for SEO. According to the study, only about 20 percent of releases had headlines that fit this criteria.

VERIFIED: The Importance of Seach Engine Advertising vs. Organic ONLY Clicks.

An interesting Search Engine Advertising (SEA) study ran across my inbox today posted by AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com. It was about a scientific study conducted by Google where they noted that “On average, 89% of paid traffic to an advertiser’s site is lost and not recovered by organic clicks in the case of a pause in your search engine advertising.”

Fair enough – they pointed to a study of 400 sites and used advanced statistical analysis that I don’t have time to study. They noted that your mileage may vary and of course you have to consider the source. I know I’d certainly never want to test this model but I didn’t have to. At one time last year before I started consulting with them, a client of mine had a credit card issue which stopped all Google PPC advertising for about 22 days. So using Google Analytics I compared that 22 day period with the 22 days prior to the payment snafu.

Indeed, even though they rank very well in organic searches, traffic decreased by just over 20% and conversions declined by a similar percentage. Historically about 22% of our traffic comes from SEA so I’d have to say this confirmed Google’s findings. Search Engine Marketing is a tricky but the only thing you can at least try to control is PPC advertising. You control the message, you control the landing page and since you control the budget – you also control the traffic.