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“Brevity is the soul of wit,” wrote Shakespeare, and this principle of communication has held true for centuries. In email marketing, too, brevity can pay off big time. A recent study found that marketing posts on Facebook that are less than 80 characters create 27% more engagement than their longer counterparts. In email subject lines, this concision is equally important if not more so, given that many email providers crop subject lines after a certain number of characters.

The character limits

Various studies have found that the major email providers tend to cluster between a 40 and 50 character limit for their subject lines:

• AOL: 38
• Hotmail: about 45 for their initial line (using word wrap)
• Yahoo!: 47
• Gmail: 130
• Thunderbird: 130
• Outlook: 255 characters

Picture this: it's a Monday morning, and you're going about your usual business of monitoring activity on the company website. You comb through the information on Google Analytics. The landing and exit pages are trending in a predictable pattern, your AdWords campaigns are doing well, and most factors appear to be normal. However, the Google Analytics pageview graph shows an inexplicable bump in last week’s data…an increase in homepage visits.

A co-worker suggests that this may be a fluke occurrence, with consumers making purchases in anticipation of the weekend's activities. However, neither of you can recall this type of increase in weeks past – was it there, but less pronounced? The only way to tell if this is anything out of the ordinary is to compare this week's numbers to those from previous weeks. Google Analytics has a handy built-in feature which will allow you to compare data between any time periods.

Comparing dates, step by step...

Imagine going to a grocery store and being forced to sign up for the chain’s Super Saver Card before you purchase your items. Don’t want to give your personal information? Too bad. You’ll have to find another retailer.

This scenario seems laughable in a brick-and-mortar store; however, it happens on e-commerce websites every day. By requiring customers to register accounts and login each time they want to make a purchase, many websites ignore key human characteristics: impatience and cautiousness. One of the biggest issues with requiring a password for checkout is that it invites a moment of pause, bringing with it the inevitable questions: