Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
0
What makes an effective email subject line?
Short/long? Action verbs at the beginning? What else?
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
9 Answers
First, an effective subject line is one that best helps achieve your goal for you email - e.g., revenue, conversions, downloads, etc.
Higher open rates, for example, are generally not the best measure of the most effective subject lines. Beginning email marketers often make the mistake of focusing too much on how a subject line affects open rates. But in fact, anybody can write a subject line to drive higher opens. Assuminng that is not your goal, make sure you use success, and not process, metrics to determine your most effective subject lines.
That out of the way...short, long, medium length - they all work. You can find studies that say that each one works better - and that's the point - they all work.
What is important is that the first 40-50 characters of your subject line conveys the key aspect of your CTA. This ensures that on mobile devices, or clients that cut off after 50 or so characters, the recipient can still get the gist of the subject line.
The copy in the subject line should be as narrow and personally relevant to each individual as possible. Broad, generic subject lines appeal to no one and everyone. They often are safe and will drive higher open rates, but what they don't do is set the recipients who want to take action up to take the action you want. Subject lines should tell someone what to do once they open the email.
If you are a retailer for example, instead of "15% off running shoes" you should use "Last Day for 15% off New Balance 993 Running Shoes."
If you are a publisher of content, numbers tend to work well: "Top 10 Tips for More Effective Subject Lines." People love lists, things being broken into manageable pieces. That said, personality works very well also: "My Favorite Subject Lines of All Time." In this case, it provides some personal aspect to it and intrigue - people want to see what your favorites are.
In the end there are so many variables that you simply need to test a vareity of approaches that works best for your brand and subscribers.
Loren McDonald
@Silverpop
@LorenMcDonald
www.silverpop.com
Effective subject lines are those that attract the right target audience and motivate them to click through to the promised material. Success depends on knowing what matters most to your target audience, speaking to their needs in their language, and including an offer that you know they value enough to take action. You must also have their contact information so that you can place your communication where they go to seek information.
There is lots of advice about subject lines and it is the most popular bit of an email to test too.
As always pay close attention to word of the award winning Loren McDonald, here's my own more bulletted list of things to pay attention to and test on to find out what works bet for your viewers.
- Length
Most people say to keep it fairly short. Mainly to help with the many different interfaces your email could be viewed in. People also have very short attention spans so remember that if it's too long they won’t bother reading it, and the chances are that means they won’t bother opening your email.
also check out this test on Which Test Won
http://whichtestwon.com/archives/7353
- Caps
Don't do it all in caps, that’s shouting. It gets you a spam warning in Spam Assassin. Some people don’t like it when you capitalise the first letter of every word either because it can be viewed as bad English. It's not worth messing around so just write the sentence normally.
- Brand name
It is optional whether or not to put your brand name in the subject line. It'll be in the from field but some interfaces put the subject line on the left and the from name on the right, so if you do want to include your brand some people like to put it in there to make sure it gets seen first.
- Accuracy
Ask yourself ‘Does the subject actually match the reason for the email?’ Whilst saying 'Free iPad' will get the email opened - not offering a free iPad will get you junked shortly afterwards.
- Relevance
Does it show relevance to the recipient? Will they be motivated to open the email - they should be otherwise you are fighting a losing battle from the off.
- Punch
This is something that goes hand in hand with the length of the subject line and the reason for the email. Punchy titles and subjects catch the attention and tend to get an action.
- Novelty
Novelty value is clearly not something you can add consistently to your emails because then they would never be novel! Every so often though it's good to think a little bit outside the box to make sure your recipients don’t get into a de-prioritising pattern. When they pretty much know exactly what your subject lines will say; they know it’s relevant but they'll read it later. Something novel can get you back to the instant opener status.
I hope that helps
Relevance.
I was just handed a recent report that included this:
The most clicked subject line words after posts, jobs and survey are:
week's
e-newsletter
issue
digest
bulletin
edition
giveaway
tips
video
news
monthly
headlines
lastest
updates
Hi David,
Bet those are the most frequently used words in subject lines that no one clicks on too, or was that your point :-)
Hey Barbara: Those actually came from a completely trusted source. I think that one of the most common mistakes that marketer's make is relying on what they think they know to be true. That's why testing and especially split-testing is so critical to improving your open rates. That is the bottom line because if you can't get your email opened and read, you may as well not have sent the email to start with. David :-)
Tough to answer. It is all about the customer. Who are you marketing to? Why did they sign up for the email?
In general, you need to keep it simple & keep it honest. It should represent what the email is actually about & should be simple.
MailChimp has a cool tool that allows you to test certain words/phrases out to see if they would be good subject lines. The best way to test subject lines for individual campaigns is by running A/B testing, which takes time, but is worth it if you are sending to a mass amount of customers.
Thanks,
@NatashaJarmick
I think subject lines set expectations so they must be clear and sticky... @malonso21
Answer This Question