Any powerful email marketing campaign uses great subject lines. If you get your subject lines wrong, and your open rate falls, your entire campaign won’t give you the results you want. But get it right and your subject line can convert abandoned carts and deliver successful online sales.
Why Email Subject Lines Are a Great Way To Increase Your Email Open Rate
Your email subject line is your first impression to the recipient. It really is crucial that you get it right in order to give your email the best possible chance of being opened and engaged with. Here are some top tips for making your subject lines catch the attention of the reader:
- Make it personal by making it as specific to the reader as possible. This can also be done by making it local to the area the reader is in.
- Make it urgent and tell the reader why your email matters now.
- Get to the point quickly and don’t use too many words.
- Play up to FOMO and show why opening your email could lead to great things.
- Use questions and provide the answers that your recipients really wants.
Make it personal and local
Email marketing is a deeply personal form of communication. After all, you are dropping a message straight into someone’s inbox, with a likely consequence that they will also get an alert that will flash up on their phone or smartwatch. If you’re going to be a part of someone’s life in that way, it’s only polite to make that message personal to the reader.
This can range from simply including someone’s name (if you have it, perhaps from associated social media campaigns), or offering discounts or recommendations based on what you think they might find most useful. It can also be made personal by making it local. Including reference to the readers local places in the subject line that the recipient would find relevant can help to increase open rates.
Tell them why it matters now
People get lots of emails but only have so much time in their day. We all make decisions on how to prioritize our time and, as a result, emails that don’t seem as urgent usually fall to the bottom of our to-do lists. More often than not, we then also forget to open them at all.
This is why subject lines should demonstrate some level of urgency. Why does your customer need to open this email today? Or better still, why do they need to open it right now? If a sale is happening just for today, you need to make that clear in the subject. Of if time is running out to register for an event, you should let them know immediately.
Get to the point quickly
It can be tempting to try and get as much information in your subject line as possible. After all, it’s the first – and in some cases, the only – thing that your recipient will see. The best subject lines, however, keep it short, sweet and straight to the point.
Research shows that the optimal length for a subject line is around 7 words, or 41 characters. This can be seen easily when alerts come through on devices, which is vital considering that 46% of emails are viewed on mobile devices.
Play on that FOMO
Whether we like it or not, we all suffer from a fear-of-missing-out, or FOMO. We hate the idea that other people are making the most of an event, service or deal that we either knew about and didn’t get to, or didn’t know about at all.
Your email subject lines can make the most of our naturally occurring FOMO and draw people in. Subject lines like “there’s not much time left to secure your spot” or “ just 20 discount codes remaining” make the information urgent, generating interest and excitement.
Ask the questions that matter
If you really understand your potential customer, you probably know the questions that they’re asking – and sometimes before they ask. There’s a reason why we now process so much of our lives through search engines. We are constantly asking ourselves questions and expecting to get the answers quickly.
Your email marketing campaign can ask those questions too. Try making your subject line a question that you know your customers want the answer to. Questions like “how secure is your home?” or “what should I cook for date night?” can be a natural way to bring in your products and services, offering them directly to an audience that wants answers now.
Make sure your email campaign is starting off on the right foot with the right tone and content. Nail this, and your emails will get your readers interested and excited, helping to transform customers into passionate brand advocates.
