Email marketing - subject lines

 

Email marketing is a quick and effective way of communicating with your customers – that’s why everyone’s doing it.

The problem with that is your customers are bombarded with messages every day.

That means they’re going to be very choosy about which ones they open, leaving you with a headache.

How can you make sure your email is the one that gets opened?

The most important factor in that is your subject line.

If it doesn’t pique their interest, your email’s not going to be opened.

I probably didn’t need to tell you that, but it leads me very nicely into the whole point of this article – how to write subject lines that will make people open your emails.

What is your email about?

You know, you wrote it, but it’s important that your subject line tells your reader what it’s about too.

How do you do that?

Read your email and summaries what it’s about to create the basis for your subject line.

Sounds easy, but you know it’s not going to be quite that simple.

What you need to do is work out the most important elements of your email. This is going to differ depending on whether you’re promoting a webinar, launching a new product or creating an offer.

Be brief

The Gods at MailChimp have worked out that the best performing email subject lines are about 50 characters in length.

Now that’s not a lot to work with and will test your creativity, but it is possible.

Create a subject line and then think carefully about every word you use, cutting and replacing as you go until you’ve created something short, succinct and powerful.

To help you hone your skills why not split test your subject lines to see which ones go down best with your audience?

Stop selling

You might think the best subject lines are going to be those that follow the “Hurry! Buy now” style – you’re wrong.

People don’t like hype; people don’t like being sold to.

Forget hyperbole; forget exclamation marks and concentrate on whom you are addressing to make sure your message is focused on the needs of your audience.

Don’t be clever

Your subject line isn’t the place for clever, overly creative statements. It must reflect what’s in your email; so clear messages will always perform better.

Those few tips should set you on the road to more success email opening rates.

Why not give them a try and see how you get on?