This subject line doesn't matter

And why your mind was already made up if you'd open this when you saw my name

I can predict the outcome of an email with high accuracy based on two questions.

I don’t need to know what their job titles are.
I don’t need to know if it’s going to 10 people or 10,000 people.
I don’t need to know if it’s a weekly roundup, a daily tip, or an in-depth article.

All I need to know is:

1. Do your readers know who you are?

2. Did your readers opt-in to receive the email?

This email is going to prove the point

…or at least it hopefully does 😅

If not, I was proven wrong. But more importantly, I’ll learn from it + it’ll inform how I approach email moving forward.

I’ve been sending this newsletter out for over 6 months now. And I’ve noticed a trend the past handful of months as the subscriber base has grown: the open rate has started to normalize out at about 50%.

If someone asked me my thoughts about open rates without seeing this data, I probably would’ve said things like:

• It’ll fluctuate due to seasonality - lots of people are taking holiday in the summer

• People will be interested in some subjects more than others, so depending on what you cover you’ll see that in the open rates

• The day of the week/time of day you send will impact if it’s buried in their inbox or if they open it

But as you can see, that’s not the case over the last 2 months. Why?

The sender is the most important variable

I get hundreds of emails every week. And I’m sure you do too.

Some go immediately to the trash.
Some are marked as saved for later.
Some are replied to immediately.

But the thing I noticed when making those quick decisions was that it was nearly always based on WHO I was receiving the email from.

When my CEO sends me an email, I typically reply immediately.

When one of the newsletters from Kyle Poyar, Elena Verna, Devin Reed, Paul Stansik, Ryan Holiday, Kaylee Edmondson, or a handful of others, I might not open it right away, but I can guarantee you that I will be opening it before long.

It has nothing to do with the subject line. It has everything to do with it coming from one of them.

Content/market fit

Many of you reading are familiar with product/market fit. Content/market fit is a different spin on that same framework.

Basically, there is a group of people who have an interest in a certain topic. Then you have individuals or entities with heavy knowledge about that topic. Content/market fit is what happens when those two segments overlap.

Here’s an example of what this looks like for me:

• I’m interested in marketing

• There are tons of smart marketers out there

• A subset of those smart marketers share content + their learnings in different places

• When that content is shared in the places where the people interested in that topic spend their time, content/market fit is found

Content/market fit in email

Let’s go back to the two questions I asked at the beginning of the email:

1. Do your readers know who you are?

2. Did your readers opt-in to receive the email?

Want to know why I asked these two questions?

Because they can be charted pretty accurately on the below axes.

And while we’d be tempted to think that it’d be a linear chart as the more familiar we are with the sender and the more we “expect” to receive an email with them, the higher the likelihood that we open/engage with the content, that’s not quite the case.

It ends up being much more of a logistic curve (and yes, I did have to go and google this term because math/calculus and I did not get along well in school).

“Nice chart Sam, what the heck does it mean?”

Short answer:

There’s a tipping point where the two variables intersect that drastically increases/decreases the chances of reaching the outcome we desire.

So in this case, it’s having the email opened or content consumed.

Long answer:

In the top right of the chart, you can see what happens when the market 1) knows who you are and 2) chooses to subscribe/follow you.

They open the email. They engage with the content.

Flip that over and on the bottom left of the chart, you can see what happens when the market 1) doesn’t know who you are and 2) is “targeted” by you (think: list purchases vs. opt-ins).

The email goes straight to trash. They keep scrolling past your content.

With the recent rise in AI-generated content, new email spam regulations, and general volume of items vying for our attention daily, this is the chart that’ll tell us the outcome ahead of time.

The further down + left we skew, the harder things become.
The further up + right we skew, the easier things become.

We’re reaching the era where changing the subject line in an email will be the equivalent of changing the color of the CTA button on our websites. Will it make a significant difference? Not really. The individual was either ready or not ready to take the next step regardless of the button’s color.

Same thing goes with emails + content. Will the subject line make a significant difference? Not really. The individual either expects or doesn’t expect something from us, regardless of the specific subject line we choose to use.

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AMA (Ask Me Anything)

Last week I shared that I’m switching things up and trying out an AMA section of the newsletter. Had no idea if I’d get questions or get a whole lot of nothing, but you all came through + sent in a handful of questions. So moving forward, keep them coming! Reply directly to this email (or drop a comment if you’re reading on Substack) + it comes right to my personal inbox.

Moving on to today’s question…

Reviewing your recent linkedin post (and newsletter) about ecosystems and BDRs. How do you guys measure them in their comp plans? Is it "how many relationships did you build?" Or is it still number of meetings or pipeline but there is a qualitative caveat to what constitutes as a meeting? 

I'm moving from being a marketing team manager to a cross-functional team manager (BDRs, marketers, and sales engineers) and I think it's a perfect opportunity to drive home the ecosystem premise since they will all report into me! But I need to convince my CRO of the BDRs comp plans first. Any advice would be much appreciated.

I received at least 5 different variations of this question since sharing, so this is a good one to bring here for our inaugural AMA question.

It’s a tough spectrum to navigate and reward for all of the desired outcomes, and I know we haven’t gotten it 100% right yet. But I am 100% confident that it’s better than the prior comp model for BDRs to driving the outcomes we seek.

Our current BDR comp model is as follows:

Compensation = base salary + flat payout per qualified opportunity + percent payout of revenue won

Let’s use some example numbers to make this easier to understand:

Base salary = $30,000
Payout per qualified opp = $50
Percent payout of revenue won = 1%

So back to that formula, a monthly payout for a BDR could look something like:

($30,000 / 12) + (10 qualified opps x $50) + (2% x 3 won deals at $10,000 each)
$2500 + $500 + $600

The main things to note in this is that we’re only rewarding what drives meaningful business, i.e. QUALIFIED pipeline (not meetings booked) and revenue won. These outcomes are very hard to be “hacked”, so it ensures that the team is working towards driving beneficial business outcomes for you.

Like this section? Want me to go back to the podcast + LinkedIn post section? Let me know either way by replying back or commenting!

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See you next week,
Sam