Imagine you are at a cocktail party and many people are talking to you at once. There are so many people talking that their voices are indistinguishable and all you hear is noise. However, if someone says your name, or something important to you, you are suddenly able to focus in. And that is something you can leverage in your B2B subject line strategies…
The Cocktail Party phenomenon demonstrates selective attention. There is a structure within our brains, the reticular activating system (RAS), that is responsible for orientation and attention – i.e. who you listen to at that crowded cocktail party. When presented with many options or distractions we naturally orientate towards information or ideas that we are invested in. Our brain is biologically designed to filter out what doesn’t interest us or what doesn’t benefit us.
Let’s apply this to email marketing. You need to reach out through the noise in your prospect’s inbox with something that will interest them, and motivate them to focus in. A report by Silverpop has found that 50% of recipients unsubscribe because the emails they are being sent are not relevant to them, and they don’t have any interest.
So you have to keep your email relevant to your prospect. Simple enough, right? Wrong.
The DMA reports that 42% of marketers have admitted only some of the emails they send are relevant, and 10% have said that their emails aren’t relevant at all. You could even be losing relevancy by accident if you haven’t thought out your ideal buyer profiles or aren’t expressly operating with a customer-focus. ALWAYS know your audience.