Counterintuitively, highly formatted and image-heavy emails can feel corporate and impersonal, decreasing engagement. Shifting to a simpler, plain-text style mimics a personal message from a friend, which increases perceived authenticity and encourages more replies and genuine connection.

A rarely used but effective tactic is placing the same emoji at the beginning and end of the email preheader (the second subject line). This visual framing technique draws attention in a crowded inbox and can improve open rates for both B2B and B2C campaigns.

December and January are prime for lead generation, contrary to popular belief. By offering content that signals buying intent (e.g., vendor comparisons, gift finders), marketers can tap into the year-end mindset of changing vendors, last-minute shopping, and making donations, outperforming generic top-of-funnel content.

A counterintuitive email marketing test is to have no preheader text. This creates visual whitespace in the recipient's inbox, making the email stand out from the clutter and potentially boosting open rates by up to 15%. A simple code snippet, which can be sourced from ChatGPT, is needed to prevent clients from auto-filling the space.

Audiences are overwhelmed in the first two weeks of January, leading to low engagement. Do not abandon new campaigns based on this data. Performance often rebounds significantly in the latter half of the month, with email click-through rates jumping by as much as 30%.

The first two weeks of January are a poor time to test new marketing initiatives. Audiences are distracted and catching up, leading to historically lower engagement. A failed test during this period may not accurately reflect the tactic's true potential, as evidenced by email click-through rates being 30% higher in late January.

Prospects have minimal attention spans. To capture their interest, marketing copy in emails or social posts must be 75 words or less and contained in a single paragraph. Reserve longer, more detailed content (100-150 words) for your existing customer base, as they are already invested and more willing to read.

In the first two weeks of the year, your audience's attention span is extremely short as they catch up on work. Cater to this mindset by using shorter subject lines, concise body copy, and designs with plenty of white space in emails and social posts to improve consumption.

A counterintuitive yet effective email tactic is capitalizing an entire word in the middle of a subject line, not at the start or end. This simple, cost-free A/B test is trending because it breaks visual patterns in the inbox, leading to a reported 16% open rate increase for B2B and 21% for B2C.