I started to move a number of my subscriptions from an old email addresses to my new OtherInbox account and during the transition I’ve kept subscriptions to both my old address and my new address, to monitor how many marketers have different mail streams based on the subscribers length of time on file. In recognition of this I wanted to give kudos to the team over at Electronic Arts for segmenting their lists and recognizing where the life cycle of a subscriber is in their email campaign…

While the content of the messages is the same the subject lines have been targeted to the various life stages of these accounts. My older account gets the regular subject while the new one receives a targeted subject calling out this is the “First message” that I’ll be expecting in my new relationship with EA. The subject also sent the expected timing of communications from EA by mentioning this is a Monthly publication.

Here is the header of the old account with EA:

And the new email address with EA:

It’s surprising how many mailers miss this simple relationship building step with their clients. Read more on a great activation program from Aeroplan, that had some amazing results: Unique Open Rates increased 32% and Unique Clickthrough Rates increased 58%. (disclosure – this is a client case study from my employer; ThinData Inc.)