Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition
Once I stripped out the spam and the person:person emails from my inbox this morning, here were the five subject lines I was left with:
- Wall Street Journal: Osama Bin Laden is Dead
- [eCommerce company]: Final Hours to Shop Our Private Sale!
- Wall Street Journal: Bin Laden Was Killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan Official Says
- [Travel site]: Last minute deals from NYC and more!
- Wall Street Journal: Osama Bin Laden Buried at Sea
- Return Path (yes, my own company): Why Whitelisting is Important to Your Email Marketing Mix
The cynic in me says “wow, nice timing on the email marketing.” I am guessing the attention and click-through on anything other than today’s big news will be greatly diminished.
But the realist in me says there’s no way anyone in a marketing department can figure out how to optimize around headlines delivered during a 24-hour global news cycle.
Does anyone have a theory about how to think about this? Is it even a problem?