Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your customers. It keeps them informed and engaged in an interactive way, and allows you to monitor traffic to your website. The objective of email marketing is to drive customers to take action. The first action your customers have to take is actually opening the email. So much emphasis is put on the content of the email that the subject line can become an afterthought, but it is of course the key to initial engagement. We’ve put together some tips to help you nail your email marketing subject line.
1. Be honest and straightforward
Save the clever puns for the email content. If your subject line fails to tell your customers what’s inside, they are less likely to read it as they’ll just view it as any old spam.
2. Keep it concise
Get straight to the point. Make it snappy yet informative. Like this tip.
3. Avoid spam filters
If you use all caps in your subject line or too much punctuation, you will trigger your customers’ spam filters and your email will almost certainly not get read. Mailchimp have a handy guide to spam filters to help you tailor your subject line correctly.
4. Don’t let an email marketing subject line be an afterthought
Your subject line should be planned alongside the email content to ensure it remains focussed and relevant. Whilst creating content to get clicks is crucial, keep in mind that no one will see your amazing content if they don’t open the email because of a poor email marketing subject line.
5. Regularly review subject-line performance
See which subject lines delivered the action you wanted – the most conversions, the highest average sale per order, the highest click-through rate, etc. This analysis should drive content and product selection strategies, but it can also show you what information is most relevant or useful.
6. Split test
Try a split-test campaign; split your contact list into two and send the same campaign content-wise but with a different subject line to see which works best.
7. Respect what your customers opted-in for
If a customers opted-in to receive special offers from your business then they expect a ‘hard sell’ email marketing subject line. However, if a customer signed up to your mailing list to receive news, bombarding them with emails with subjects such as ‘10% off! Don’t miss out!’ will often not be well-received by them. Stick to what the customer wants to retain their loyalty.
At Digital Glue, we regularly produce email campaigns for our clients and ourselves, with subject lines that appeal to the audience and stand out in a full inbox.
