Fifty
characters could be all that stands between you and the success of your
next email campaign. Why? Because 50 characters is all the space you
have in a typical subject line – to catch the attention of your reader,
entice them to open your email and take action. With so much at stake,
marketers need a quick and proven reference tool for developing subject
lines that get the desired
result: opened emails.
Let these
rules be your guide.
Rule 1: Read the Newspaper
If
you want to develop subject lines that result in higher open rates, pick
up your local paper. Headlines usually highlight a story’s most
important point with brevity, while taking the audience into
consideration. Use that approach to make your subject lines short and
intriguing enough to compel your subscribers toread your emails.
Subject
lines should clearly state what your readers can expect from your
email, what’s in it for them and what you want them to do as a result of
the email. And your subject line must stand out from others in your
customers’ crowded inbox in the most relevant way. Emulating the
headlines from newspapers can be a good starting point in the
development of subject lines.
Rule 2: Focus on the Objective
What
is the objective, or end goal, of your email marketing program? In most
cases your end goal is not necessarily high open rates, but rather to
have subscribers take a specific and measurable
action. Determine
what that one action is, and make sure your subject line will achieve
your objective. For instance, if your goal is for recipients to purchase
from your online store, don’t use a subject line that is informational
in nature. Instead, use a clear call-to-action that emphasizes their
opportunity to make a “must have” purchase.
Learn from past
campaigns – look at subject lines in emails that were associated with
the highest number of conversions. Or if you drill down into your
analytics, you might find additional clues, such as an email with a
relatively low open rate but a high sales-per-order rate. That could
mean something in the subject line strongly appealed to a narrow segment
of your list. You could then test variations of the same type of
subject line with other audience segments.
Rule 3: Leverage
the “From” Line
The “From” line tells the recipient who sent
the email, and the subject line sells the recipient on opening it. So
take the time to consider the best use of the “From” line, based on the
goal of the email and the audience that will receive it. What name or
email address gets the highest response?
Some basic guidelines:
If it’s the first time you have emailed a specific audience, use a
“From” line that creates a sense of familiarity and/or credibility with
your potential readers. They may not be familiar with your company or
brand, so you will want to use a brief “From” line that includes your
company name as well as the general purpose of the email, such as: Acme
Health Experts. Coupled with a compelling subject line, this approach
can generate higher open rates than a “From” line of “Acme, Inc.”
If the “From” line lists your company name, you don’t have to repeat
it in the subject line, which frees up space there. But do consider
branding your subject line with the name of your newsletter, for
example, so that it will stand out in the inbox of your recipients. For
instance, if the “From” line says Acme Health Experts, your subject line
might say, Health Wise Newsletter.
Rule 4: Mention Key
Information First
It sounds obvious, but it’s important to
mention the most important information first when it comes to both your
subject line and the email content itself. You only have one opportunity
to make
a first impression and with subject lines that adage is
amplified.
Some tips:
Keep your end goal, and the
interest of the recipients, in mind: What is it that you want them to do
after reading the email, and what would make them care enough to do
that? If you can answer that question in 50 characters or less, you may
have your subject line.
In many cases it doesn’t make sense to
try to cram the offer and call-to-action into literally 50 characters.
If that is the case, focus on mentioning something that makes your
recipient care enough to open the email to learn more. Then use the top
portion of the email to elaborate on the offer.
Most email
preview panes allow for 50 characters worth of space in the subject line
area, and anything beyond that gets cutoff. So make sure the cut-off
doesn’t occur in a crucial word, such as a price or date. One of the
best ways to catch this is to send a test email message to your own
account and see what it looks like in your preview pane.
Rule
5: Personalize
Personalized subject lines are a simple way to
secure the interest and action of your recipients. Subject lines can be
personalized based on the product or content preferences of the
recipient, or based on their interests, past purchases, website visits
or links clicked. Where appropriate, use of the recipients’ first names
can be a very effective form of personalization as well. When
personalizing, be sure to consider the following:
Be
careful when using past purchases to personalize because the purchase
could have been a gift for someone else and might not relate to your
reader’s real interests. Always make it easy for readers to find and
update their data and preferences so you can personalize in a relevant
and accurate manner.
If you elect to include the first name
of your recipients, take the time to go through the database and make
sure that you actually have the first name for every record. Also assure
that the names in your database use proper capitalization, such as
Alice instead of alice. If the database is not 100 percent accurate,
it’s better to not use first name personalization in your email
messages.
Rule 6: Urgency Drives Action
The
recipients of your email messages are more likely to act on your offer
if they have an urgent reason to do so. Where appropriate, drive urgency
with messaging such as expiring offers, “first XX
people” or only “X
days left.” You can even create a planned series of emails – each
incorporating the imminent deadline. However, don’t overuse or
misrepresent deadlines as it will train your recipients to wait until
the last minute to act or, worse yet, sour them to your offers entirely.
But do drive urgency where it’s relevant.
Rule 7: Lead, but
Don’t Mislead
While it’s important to drive a sense of
urgency and develop offers that compel action, it’s even more important
to maintain your company’s integrity in every outbound communication.
That means not misleading your prospects and customers with the subject
line in order to get them to read or act on the call-to-action in the
email.
Never stretch the truth in your subject line or promise
more than your email delivers, make grand claims that require compliance
in order to redeem an offer but make it difficult for customers to do
so, or offer one thing and deliver something different than what is
described.
Rule 8: “Free” is not Evil
Yes, you can
use the word “free” in a subject line, contrary to the urban legends out
there. People still respond to the word “free;” so, the increase in
orders or other actions will almost always outweigh the messages lost to
filtering. But be sure to follow the best practices listed below to
minimize your email message getting caught in spam filters:
Don’t make “free” the first word every time.
Don’t use the
word “free” in conjunction with an exclamation point.
Refrain from spelling “free” in all capital letters.
Test
the use of the word «free» as you would any other variable – and
optimize on the best test results.
Rule 9: Plan for
Deliverability
There are a number of factors that affect
whether your email will be delivered to the inbox or not, and most of
them are within your control. More methods for improving deliverability
are detailed later in this guide, but here are a few simple things you
can do with subject lines to increase the deliverability of your email
marketing campaigns:
There’s a fine line between “catchy”
and “spammy.” Run your email subject line and body copy through a
content checker to identify any spam-like words, phrases or
construction. The content checker will tell you which types of phrases
to avoid.
Two tricks that could trip a spam filter: subject
lines in all capital letters and using more exclamation points than
necessary (both look unprofessional, too). In fact, we recommend not
using exclamation points at all if you can avoid it.
Rule 10:
Measure, Test, Analyze – Repeat
There are numerous ways to
optimize your subject lines and, in all cases, the easiest and most
effective way to identify the most effective method for each of your
campaigns is to measure, test, analyze and then repeat that process.
In
order to use data to support better decisions, you must have meaningful
data to analyze. But where do you get the data? If you want to
understand which of two test subject lines results in the best
conversion rate, then you need a way to track responses from Email A
differently than Email B. That may mean assigning a unique source code
to the landing page associated with each of the emails, or it may mean
assigning some other unique identifier such as a promotional code. Then,
compare the two sets of data to determine the results. Be sure to use a
large enough sample size with each test group so that your results are
statistically accurate – 300 or more responses per test group is
generally considered viable from an analysis perspective. And be careful
to change just one variable across test cells so you can definitively
determine the cause of any change in results.
Some testing ideas
for your subject lines include:
Negative subject lines
vs. positive ones – “We hate to see you go” vs. “Newsletter
subscription offer”
Challenger vs. champion offers
–Test your best-performing subject line against a new challenger
Personalization vs. no personalization –Using the
subscriber’s name in the subject line vs. not mentioning a name)
Mention of price or savings vs. no mention of price or savings
Once
you have results, use the metrics from each segment to determine which
subject line(s) delivered the action you wanted – the most conversions,
the highest average sale per order, the highest click-through rate,
etc. From this data you should be able to establish a “champion”
subject line, then introduce a “challenger” and test again.
Conclusion
Yes,
this seems like a lot of fuss over 50 little characters. But those 50
characters will have a significant impact on the success or failure of
your email. It pays to get them right.
Charles Brodeur
eCommerce Consultant
BigTurns Business Systems
Vancouver, BC V6E4R1
info@BigTurns.com
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