Much like a newspaper headline, your email subject line is how you grab your reader’s interest and is as important to get right as the content of your email. A good subject line will generate more clicks and opened emails are what you want from your email marketing campaigns.
We’ve put together some guidelines for writing an effective email subject line.
1. Keep it short
A short subject line won’t be cut off in your reader’s inbox and should effectively get your point across in less than 50 characters. Having said this though, don’t give away too much information. Your reader’s curiosity needs to be piqued enough to open the email. For example, a less effective subject line would read, ‘Illness causes band to cancel their tour to Cape Town’. This may be better, ‘Band cancels Cape Town tour’. Your subject line is still informative but will entice your reader to find out more about why the tour was cancelled.
2. Test it and then test it again
Test your subject line with different mail groups to determine which subject line leads to more clicks. Schedule enough time for testing before your email campaign. Conducting an A/B split test on your subject line can be a very effective way to see what works for your subscribers, and what doesn’t.
3. Making it personal
Personalizing your subject line is tricky and email marketers remain divided on ways to personalize the subject line. Some will agree that putting your readers name in the subject line can entice your reader to open your email. Others feel that adding the readers name may come across as a sales pitch and your emailwill most likely be deleted.However personalizing your subject line with your reader’s preferences such as interests, content, product or past product purchases will entice your readers to open the email. The following would appeal to a young intrepid traveller, ‘Backpacking through Europe on a shoestring budget’.
4. Remember to include your company name
Your brand is what your reader recognizes. Your reader trusts your brand and they know that your email will have content that interests them, ‘Budget backpacking through Europe with Company Name’. Your company name in the subject line also lets the reader know that they are not going to find a virus running rampant on their PC after opening the email or that they are not receiving spam.
5. Give it a timeline
Give your subject line a deadline such as, ‘Special rates for Bali for this week only’. If a customer sees that something is only available for short period of time they will be more inclined to read your email and act on it.
6. Question it
Ask yourself, ‘Would I open this email?’We receive so many emails every day and we know which emails we will decide to open straight away, which ones we will leave for later and which ones we will just delete. Ask yourself if you would open your own email with your subject line.
We have even more tips on writing subject lines here.
