We all have crowded inboxes, how is your email marketing campaign going to get noticed? We know your customers scan email subject lines in their inbox and decide, open or ignore. The first step of getting a improved ROI from your email campaign is a great subject line. Here are 3 tips for subject lines that will help your message get opened.
3 Tips to increase opening rates with great subject lines.
1. Include content in the subject line.
Your customers want accurate subject lines which describe the email content rather than a name of the email newsletter or the month or day it was written.
Good email subject line examples;
- BuzzFeed: "Not Cool, Guys"
- JetBlue: "You're missing out on points."
- Ticketmaster: "Read your review for John Mulaney"
Research tells us your customers want to be in control, “show me content but let me decide”. It’s better to describe the content of an email and let them decide if they want to open rather than discover something different and then simply deleting it instead.
The email subject line below is a bad example
Why? The subject line does not reveal any information about what the email contains and your customer has to open the email to find out if it’s relevant to them. Your customer is not in control, remember “show me content and let me decide”.
2. Place descriptive keywords at the beginning of your subject line then limit to 40 characters.
Relevant and to the point is how we like it. Another point to remember is email programs do limit how many visible characters a subject line will display in their inbox.
It’s worth noting these limits will vary and we would anticipate will change over time. Whilst we recommend displaying no more than 40 characters, some programs display less so its important descriptive keywords are placed at the beginning.
3. Don’t repeat sender information in the subject line.
With a quick glance your customers should be able to identify who the email is from and what it’s about from the subject line. Because of the provider character limits repeating information is a waste of valuable space.
A bad example would be;
“My Company” as the sender information and an email subject line:
My Company | Company news
Note the repetitive keywords give no additional information. Again your customer would have to open your email to learn what its about. Far better would have been;
Meet our new Team member Jane Doe.
Further reading
Econsultancy - Five examples of effective email marketing campaigns
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