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Turns out the Obama Campaign direct marketing and analytics team learned what we’ve learned many times over, that “the casual tone” often works best.

Whether you’re thinking in terms of “direct response,” “click-thru,” or “engagement,” camouflage — looking like something else that would naturally appear in the context and typically invite engagement, like a note from a friend in the email inbox — is typically a highly effective tactic.

According to the Campaign team leader, “The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your in-box from other people,” Fallsgraff says. “ ‘Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration.”

The difference between the best and the rest? Millions of dollars in incremental donations.

So, go forth and be casual. And more that, test!

Read the article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek here.