Creative meets Innovative

Yea, it’s true… We got a 70%+ CTR. Twice.

17 Oct 2010 | No Comments | posted by Coldfire Promotions | in Blog Post, Miscellaneous, Slider

As many of our regular readers have probably already seen, we recently created a short YouTube video for one of our clients in hopes that it would go viral. The premise of the video was to spoof the recent Chrysler/UAW-employee debacle that led to 13 employees getting fired. While this was a touchy subject, we decided to take a risk and publish the video anyway.

While the original broadcast was about the employees drinking beer and smoking pot on their lunch break, we took a humorous spin on it and showed how “K/E employees are so busy and such hard workers that they don’t have time for lunch breaks, they have to drink and smoke on the job!” While it’s quite obvious that the whole story is totally unrealistic, we did decide to place a disclaimer in the video just in case.

Now that you understand the reason behind it all, and you’ve watched the video, of course, let’s take a look at how we achieved those 70%+ click-through rates!

While the national CTR for e-blasts is only 5.9% (Epsilon Q4 2009 E-mail Trends and Benchmark, Jan 2010), our e-mail campaign announcing this YouTube video reached a record high CTR of OVER TWELVE TIMES THAT! First, we designed and delivered and e-blast for our client, K/E Electric Supply, announcing this “hilarious spoof video” in which K/E employees were “BUSTED drinking and smoking on the job.” After only hours of the e-blast being live, it achieved an open rate of 38.65% and a click-through rate of 76.70%! I could not believe it! While Coldfire Promotions is known for having high-end e-marketing statistical averages (23.84% CTR so far this year), this was undoubtedly insanely high!

As exciting as this was, I had to be sure. Using a similarly design e-blast, I went ahead and sent out one to my own e-mail list. Sure enough, 24 hours later, it turned out a 72.22% click-through rate! It wasn’t a fluke; it was just attention-grabbing marketing.

So what was the secret, you ask? It could have been the interesting subject line. It might have been the fun, uniquely-designed e-blast. Or it might have just been timing. However, I’m going to have to chalk this one up to YouTube’s embed feature. While it is currently impossible to embed video directly into e-mails (the coding doesn’t allow it, and can you imagine an e-mail that took 5 minutes to load?), there is a lovely thing called the “print screen” button! While preparing my recent white paper for the public, I read a claim that said placing and image into an e-mail that looks like an embedded YouTube video will draw 5 times as many clicks than a text link. Sure enough, I decided to try it (twice) and it definitely does work!

So what’s the moral of the story? Quit wasting your time with plain text e-mails, poor color choices, and lack of attention-grabbing imagery. Try something new, something fresh, and hit that 70% click-through rate! Don’t know how to? Give us a call, we’ll do it for you.