Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Bet On The Weird Idea

7 May 2018 · 1 min

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0:44

Short transcript excerpt from a speaker describing Mailchimp marketing experiments and guidance: they run contests/tests to compare emails/ads and recommend "bet on the weird" (choose the unexpected variant). Empirical claims in the excerpt: adding an emoji to an email subject line increases open rates; including an animated GIF increases click-through rates. The speaker notes these tactics are visible in customers' marketing and Mailchimp's own practice.

Chapters

We run these contests in the marketing group at mailchimp. And because we're always wondering, like, okay, which, which email will work or which ad will more people click on, or which one is going to win? The best bet is bet on the weird one. Right. Bet on the one that you don't expect to win. We can see that if you put an emoji in your subject line, people will open it more often. And it's emoji. Right. It's not like this is not a estate secret. Yeah. The same thing goes for click throughs if you put an animated gif in it. Right. And so we see it in the marketing of our customers and we certainly try to practice it ourselves.