Well, it's been a while since I wrote a post for which I have no excuse for other than having somewhat of a hectic lifestyle at the moment. What with work, the gym 3 times a week and cycling whenever I can. Not to mention standing outside women's changing rooms while the missus tries on copious amounts of clothing only to buy 1 item... all this amounts to not leaving me much time to myself :)
However, I have finally got 5 mins to write my latest post about Email Subject lines... OK, so I'm sure this has been written many times before, but you can never stress the importance of a good subject line. After all, it is the first thing the recipient sees before opening an email. I suppose they actually see who the email from, but the subject line says what it's about... It's in this split second, in which the 50 character (max) sentence is read that, the user decides whether or not to open or delete. So you have to make it count.
So here are my top 8 tips to creating the right subject line to deliver success...
1. Test, test and test – Look at email campaigns you’ve sent in the past. What worked? What didn't? What got the highest open? what saw the best return?... These are key learning's to help you decide on your next subject line. You might find that for a particular topic there’s a general trend or subject style that resulted in higher open rates. You may even have a particular email in your inbox that caught your eye and made you open the email.
2. Identify the importance – Try and put as much important and relevant information in to your subject lines as possible. For example, if you’re sending out an email about a special offer make sure the product name and details on the offer appear in the subject line in a clear and concise format such as “25% off ACME Product – Today Only”.
3. Personalise the subject line – Placing personal details such as a name in the subject line makes people feel you care, makes them more loyal to the brand and most importantly, ALWAYS produces more opens that one without. A previous test I carried out for a large mobile network showed open rates of 26% for personalised subject line against 17% for those without the personalisation.
4. Avoid spam keywords – Most email servers automatically filter out any emails that contain spam keywords in their subject line – Words such as free, save, sale, etc all trigger spam detection software so keep them out of your subject lines wherever possible, because its no good having a compelling subject line, if its not even making it to the inbox.
5. Trigger curiosity – One of the best ways to improve open rates is to play to peoples curiosity... People like to be enticed, and they like suspense... So exploit this in your subject line... make them 'want' to open the email. eg. {firstname}, Guess what?
6. Make the offer clear – If you’re making a special offer to your subscriber then be upfront and include it as part of your subject line. People love bargains and special offers so let them know about it before anything else. However, you have to try and do this without using too much spam (tip #4).
7. Easy identification – Make sure your subscribers know the email is coming from you. Deceptive subject lines can confuse people so always try and including your company name in the subject line. Also, make sure you set the “From” attribute of your email to include your name and your companies name, such as “From: John Smith <john@acme.com>”.
8. Exclaim nothing – Avoid using excessive punctuation at the end of your subject lines. Google bans punctuation from AdWords ad’s for a reason – too much hype can annoy and confuse people.
Well there you have it – 8 tips for better subject lines in your next email marketing campaign. If you have any tips you’d like to share feel free to post a comment below.
