In a post at the DIRECT website, Ken Magill discusses the results of a survey conducted by MailerMailer. Among its more interesting findings: Subject lines containing up to 35 characters significantly outperform those with more than 35.

"According to the email marketing software-on-demand provider," says Magill, "messages with subject lines of 35 characters or fewer achieved average open and clickthrough rates of 18.98% and 3.52%, respectively, in the second half of 2008, while those with more than 35 characters achieved average open and clickthrough rates of 15.38% and 1.75%, respectively."

The MailerMailer survey also found that the average clickthrough rate in the second half of 2008 was slightly higher than in the first half: 2.80 percent vs. 2.73 percent.

Magill notes these numbers might seem at odds with an Epsilon study that reported average clickthrough rates of 4.7 percent in the second quarter and 5.9 percent in the third.

He explains the disparity like this: "Epsilon defines clickthrough rates as the number of clicks divided by the number of emails delivered. MailerMailer, on the other hand, defines clickthrough rates as the number of unique clicks divided by the number of opportunities—or links—to click." In other words, the findings are closer than they appear.

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