The write stuff

Have you heard of microcopy? It's those little bits of text that prompt you to do something on a website or app:

• Book a call
• Sign up to our newsletter
• Spend just £50 more for free delivery

But you can find microcopy offline too, as in:

• Beware of the dog
• Contents may be hot
• This way up

I like it because it can be playful:

But it’s also challenging: you have to make a small number of words work very hard if you want people to act.

Take emails for example: getting people to open them is the name of the game, which means there's a lot riding on the subject line. The trouble is, as readers, we quickly become immune to the usual tips and tricks:

Scarcity: Hurry, only a few seats left for this event!

Curiosity: Are you making these 5 marketing mistakes?

Humour: Yes, we're serious – you can win a cheese fountain!

Fortunately, nowadays the subject header isn’t your only shot

You can also use the ‘preview’ text. This is text that appears under the subject line to help people decide if it’s worth clicking on or not.

If your preheader is boring, people might not even open your emails to see all the hard work you put in.

*Shudder*

But if it lures people in, it can make your email a success, which is why I think about them a lot.

However last week I went a little wild

I thought I’d experiment. I wondered: how important is that little tiny piece of copy really, am I the only person obsessing over it, is it really that key?

So I made ‘When in Rome’ the subject header, and followed it with the Italian for ‘Do as the Romans do’. The result?

Crickets.

Well, not exactly crickets, but my usual healthy open rate dropped by 15%.

Of course it there could be other reasons for this, but my hunch is that the line "Fate come fanno I romani" did not appeal.

I can see why now: Rather than looking intriguingly Italian, it probably looked like gibberish. People don’t have time to figure things out for themselves, and nor should they, it’s up to the sender to make things clear, while still creating interest.

No matter!

The good thing about sending emails each week is that I have an opportunity to test and learn - yes, I’m in the marketing trenches out here so you don’t have to be.‍

And I got another post out of it.

Now let’s just see if anyone reads it…