10 ways top brands are double-clicking with customers
Findings from the Phrasee data vault 10 ways top brands are double-clicking with customers
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” or so Who should said some old English guy who never wrote a marketing message. read this paper But he was right! Saying something in the Don’t read this Orange Paper if...: space a subject line, SMS, or push notification allows is difficult. Constructing a good • You love writing hundreds of marketing message is hard. And thinking message variants yourself of multiple variants for each message you • You hate staying up to date with the want to send is an incredible challenge. latest, data-driven marketing trends • You’re already delighted with your At Phrasee, we believe that there is a science conversions, clicks, and opens to crafting a winning marketing message. • You’re happy to let your competitors And we’ve got it figured out. And we’re keep this data to themselves sharing some of our findings with you, • You don’t want to make more direct from the Phrasee data vault. money with your marketing Read this report. Think about your subject Remember: if any of these sound like you, lines. Recommit to a comprehensive testing DON’T READ THIS ORANGE PAPER. plan. And (obviously check out Phrasee and let us help you supercharge your messages! Everyone else: right this way, please...
Contents Introduction 4 1: What calls to action make the most impact? 5 2: How do you convert an abandoned basket? 6 3: Which offer messaging gets customers excited? 7 4: How much do your customers hate paying for shipping? 8 5: How many awesome superlatives should you use in your life-changing marketing messages? 9 6: Tell us RIGHT NOW: does urgent messaging work? 10 7: Is it time to embrace customer-centricity? 11 8: Emoji... or eNOji? 12 9: Are you cool enough to use Gen Z slang? 13 10: What language resonates with your loyal customers? 14 11: What’s the best way to win back lapsed customers? 15 Now what? 16 The final word 17 Appendix 18
Methodology Why are you giving This analysis comes from over 200,000 this away for free?! Phrasee-generated messages over a five-year period, comprising billions The number one question we’re asked of individual opens and clicks. is “which words should I include to create the best-performing messages?”. We took a range of frequently appearing Here’s the thing: we’ve got a whoooole lot of words, phrases, and emojis from messages data (what you’re about to see is just a tiny sliver sent by the world’s biggest brands and dug of it), so we can tell you what’s working for other deep into our data to find the lower quartile brands, and how that’s changing over the years. (25th percentile score), median (50th percentile score), and upper quartile (75th percentile What we can’t tell you is what will work for score) of each phrase. The lower quartile shows you. Every brand is unique, from your tone the lower-performing message variants, the of voice to your customers to your marketing upper quartile shows the higher-performing strategy, and what works for Walgreens variants, and the median sits in the middle. doesn’t work for Party City. This should give you an indication of the But with so much data, we can look at trends, average risk or benefit of using a specific and say what tends to work better for most phrase in your own messages. The higher brands, and what tends to bomb. the number, the higher the likelihood that the variant will perform well. For instance, That’s why we’re not worried about opening a phrase with a –10% median is less likely our data vaults. Take it! It’s all interesting stuff! to lead to a performance uplift than one We even invite you to test out some of the best- with a 10% median. performing phrases for yourself, and hopefully it’ll work out for you. However, more than likely, If you want to see the full data set, head to you need to experiment at scale with your the appendix, where you’ll find all the phrases content to ensure that your messages we looked at, along with the associated data. are always on point.
Call to ACTION Call to ACTION Call to ACTION 1: What calls to action Call to ACTION Call to ACTION make the most impact? Call to ACTION Call to ACTION Call to ACTION READ ME NOW! Right, now we’ve got your attention... Our data suggests that high-performing calls So, that’s the end of it right? Well, not quite. NOW READ ME! Truthfully, there is no silver to action (CTAs) are those with a clear, direct There’s a whole lot of nuance to what works bullet CTA that will suddenly double your end point – such as “buy” or “claim” – or those and what doesn’t in CTA language. An revenue. It depends on the audience, the implying newness – for instance, “introducing” unexpected finding is that “save” doesn’t channel, and sometimes just the way customers performs well in email subject lines and SMS. perform so well on average. Who doesn’t want are feeling in the moment. That’s why to save? Your customers, apparently! “Discover” experimenting with not just the color of your is also a relatively low-performing CTA word – CTA button, but also the language, is essential. perhaps because it’s lacking that direct “what’s in it for me?” angle that customers seem to love.
2: How do you convert an abandoned basket? Tapping into FOMO seems to be an effective way to convert those pesky abandoned baskets. According to the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is a staggering 70%, meaning you could be missing out on a whole lot of revenue. “Expiring” is the highest-performing word across subject lines, SMS, and push – it makes customers worry that their cart of goodies will sell out, so it can be an effective way to nudge them into action. Playing with other FOMO-adjacent phrases, such as “running low” or “selling out” could also work to remind customers that the clock is ticking on the products they’re coveting. Abandoned baskets fall into the bucket of The million-dollar subject line “trigger campaigns” – the message is “triggered” When Currys joined forces with Phrasee, In fact, this campaign led to a 9% by the customer doing something – in this case, leaving their cart of goods without checking out. Movable Ink, Adobe, and Merkle, they found conversion rate uplift across This gives you a great opportunity to constantly themselves a million-dollar subject line – or, Currys’ abandoned baskets and experiment with your abandoned basket more specifically, a $3.4m subject line! double the website visits. Nice! messages over time to see which language We worked with Currys to optimize its nudges your customers over the finish line. abandoned basket campaign, and our AI-powered messages helped Currys make millions more in yearly incremental revenue.
3: Which offer messaging gets customers excited? These findings are 100% surprising! You may be shocked to hear that it’s NOT a We also found that the word “sale” does far case of “the bigger, the better” when it comes better in SMS messages than any specific to discounts. In fact, our data reveals that 50% percentage discount. Customers signed up to off is the sweet spot across email subject lines, your SMS list tend to be among your most loyal SMS, and push messages – it drives more clicks and engaged, so any degree of sale is more and opens than 60% off and 70% off messages. likely to appeal to this audience. Similarly, the Beyond 50% off, customers may start to worry word “discount” performs well in subject lines that they’ll be left trawling through the dregs –it piques curiosity and encourages customers of the sale, so it’s not always a numbers game. to click through to find out what the discount is. This doesn’t mean that you suddenly need to slash everything to half price (though your customers will probably thank you)! Instead, take a closer look at the performance of your offer messages. Is 20% enough for your customers, or does it take a 70% off alert to get them clicking?
4: How much do your customers hate paying for shipping? Some days it feels like every other message in your inbox is about free shipping, which can quickly leave customers desensitized to it. $ Most brands offer free shipping fairly regularly, which is probably why messages around shipping aren’t hugely effective for subject lines or push notifications. However, where you might see it having an impact is in your SMS marketing. Phrases related to shipping have a median 11.6% performance uplift for SMS messages, with “free delivery” and “next day” being especially impactful. What this might suggest is that What about convenience? to cut through with your shipping offers, you might need to try a different channel to grab For beauty retailer Sally Beauty, convenience customers’ attention. gets its customers clicking. “One of the major wins for us is convenience,” said Clara However, this won’t be the same for every Montiel, CRM Manager of Strategy at Sally brand. Brands with especially price-sensitive Beauty, “whether that’s buying online, picking customers may be more receptive to shipping up in store or same-day delivery.” messages, so there’s no need to stop using it entirely. Just make sure it’s one of many versions If free shipping isn’t resonating, why not of the marketing messages you’re sending out, experiment with kerbside pickup, store so you can test how well it’s working. pickup, or super-speedy shipping?
BEST 5: How many awesome superlatives should you use in your life-changing marketing messages? AWESOME This the BEST SECTION, filled with AWESOME CONTENT about the PERFECT WORDS for your marketing! PERFECT Except... our analysis of high-performing marketing messages found that superlatives may not be the most impactful option. When everyone is screaming about their BEST-EVER product or the MUST-HAVE jeans for the season, superlatives quickly lose all meaning, so maybe it’s a sign to get more creative with your messaging. BEST-EVER If you really must, our data suggests that “greatest” (in push messages) and “fantastic” (in SMS messages) might be your best bets. So, while we would tell you to proceed with caution, there is no set rule for what works and what doesn’t with superlatives, so you’ve just got to... you guessed it... experiment! MUST-HAVE FANTASTIC
7: Is it time to embrace customer-centricity? We’re telling you this because you’re our favorite... Our data found that on average, customer-centric Personalization is going nowhere in marketing, messages see the biggest performance uplift and customers like to know that you’re paying Make every channel count across all channels. On a very lovely note, it turns attention to them. Phrases such as “you’ll like” out that a simple “thank you” is the most effective and “you’ll love” show your customers that you “The more your customers feel like you single phrase of them all. It gives your customers know their tastes, and works well if you offer actually know them, the more likely they are the warm and fuzzies with its appreciative personalized recommendations based on to engage. Each marketing channel can sentiment and shows that you care about them. a customer’s purchase or browse history. serve a different purpose. Transactional Manners cost nothing, and in this case, they emails may be more formal while SMS can might just make you millions. Or maybe not. If you want to start somewhere, customer- be more casual to make the most of limited Guess you’ll just have to try it out for yourself. centricity is the place to play with your character space. Plus, each individual messages. Our data shows that it really works will have different preferences for the –as long as you find the magic words that types of messages they like to receive, so resonate with your specific audience. understanding when to use which channel is crucial. Show them you know them to create the best customer connections.” Jeff Mills, Director of Product Marketing at Iterable
9: Are you cool enough to use Gen Z slang? “MOOOOOM, you’re so CHEUGY! Don’t be salty about it – just take the L!” Gen Z slang is incomprehensible to many of us. While it can be tempting for brands to use it to appeal to a younger audience, it can very quickly turn into a “What’s up, my fellow kids?” situation. We found that Gen Z slang (we’re talking “drip,” “sus,” “stan,” and more) doesn’t work so well for the average Phrasee customer. It actually tends to have a detrimental effect on subject lines and push messages, so proceed with caution! The slang of our 1997-2012 babies has the “best” impact in SMS messages, but on balance, it might not be worth the risk. Just accept that you’re a cheugy old pre-1996 millennial baby and move on. The bottom line? Unless you’re sure your audience is primarily Gen Z, just don’t bother with shoehorning their slang into your messages... and even then, probably don’t bother.
YO LOU’RE 10: What language resonates YA with your loyal customers? X L You + your customers = together forever xoxo It’s a mixed bag when it comes to loyalty messages! If anything, what our data suggests is that loyalty messages are highly dependent on the channel. For email subject lines, “rewards” has the best impact, while for push it’s “welcome,” and for SMS it’s “points.” Now, there’s no obvious reason why “rewards” would perform better on one channel than another – but in all honesty, it doesn’t really matter. For loyalty, the data is inconclusive. But that’s not a bad thing! It just means that you should constantly experiment with your own messages to see what resonates, and what doesn’t. Perhaps your people go crazy for “perks,” or they’re interested in being a “VIP.” You can’t possibly know until you experiment, so be sure to dig into that data!
11: What’s the best ? 11 p - a way to win back e Y t h ig ns bonus i k lapsed customers? uc r l o f “I’ll never let you go, Jack...” In what will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody, win-back messages are hard. You know the type - “Come back! We miss you! Why don’t you want to buy our Windows 95 games anymore?!”... but those lapsed customers just want to stay lapsed. What our data does indicate, though, is that The recipe for success win-back language appears to be most successful in SMS messages. Customers have Meal delivery kit brand Home Chef takes a to really love your brand to sign up for SMS two-pronged approach to its email marketing, marketing, so it stands to reason that this crowd tackling both acquisition (acquiring new will be the most receptive to your win-back customers) and reactivation (winning back messages. We found that phrases like “renew” customers who have paused their deliveries). and “checking in” work well here, but you might want to play around with similar terms to Home Chef, along with email service provider remind your lapsed customers about the good (ESP) Salesforce Marketing Cloud, has found ol’ times you shared. success with playful messages, especially those tapping into the holidays for fun, themed subject lines. With Phrasee, Home Chef has the power to test a huge variety of tones, emojis, and phrases to optimize its email campaigns.
If you keep sending messages with the same The fact is, our vaults contain the secret words “winning” words, your customers will quickly (and emojis) to your success. We know that. Now get bored, tastes will change, and your But what you DON’T know yet is what those performance will degrade. Look what happens specific words and emojis are. Finding them when you go too hard on the superlatives requires constant and iterative testing. Maybe –people tune them out and they become you’re one of the lucky ones who will try meaningless. That’s why you need to get creating a bunch of messages using what what? creative with your content – and carry on being you’ve found in this paper, you’ll see sales soar, creative. Testing messages isn’t a one-off activity and you’ll enjoy a massive bonus at the end –it should be a consistent effort to try new things, of the year. But, more likely, some of the high- step up the diversity of your messages, and see performing variants we’ve shared will work, what works for YOUR customers. some won’t, and some of what resonates with Everything you’ve seen in this your customers is just wildly out-there. This is just a starting point! Humans can’t test It’s always the way. Orange Paper has helped the every single word in existence (well, maybe world’s leading brands make we could, but our data scientists have to sleep The moral of the story? You need to experiment. at some point), so take this Orange Paper as Switch things up, try words you wouldn’t usually millions with the magic of inspiration, not as gospel. Marketing is inherently try, and see what happens. We’re letting you marketing message optimization creative, and not every phrase you try will work. in on our secret words... now it’s over to you to But that’s OK! That’s why we experiment! And see what you can do with them. They might do it for you too – but that is especially why WE, at Phrasee, experiment. before you start planning your Because it works. It works from the very first experiment, and it only gets better from there. early retirement, you should know that you can’t just create a soup of these words, emojis, Ready to test your and sentiments and watch marketing messages? the dollars roll in. Great! Grab your copy of our “Testing for success” Orange Paper to find out exactly how it’s done.
The final word Hopefully our research has given you plenty of inspiration – and of course, if you want to find those words that will help you double-click with your customers, we’d love to help! Book your demo today to see how Phrasee’s AI-powered platform can help you and your marketing team find the words that drive more clicks, conversions, and, yes, revenue.
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