Your email marketing subject line is often the most important part of your entire message; after all, great body content will go to waste if the message heads straight to the trash folder. To help get more of your messages opened, follow these easy steps on how to improve your email marketing subject lines.
1. Keep it short and sweet
When it comes to subject lines, the shorter they are the better they are. Research has shown that the ideal subject length is around 50 characters. While it may seem difficult to get your message across in such as small amount of space, doing so allows you to distill down your message to one or two key points.
2. Add preview text
Most email providers show the first few lines of an email along with the subject line. Make the preview text count! Pack as much enticing content as you can into the first few sentences to substantially boost open rates.
3. Show readers how they’ll benefit
Entice your readers with subject lines that show them what they can gain by opening your email. Likewise, people love numbers; the subject line “Eight reasons no one is reading your newsletter” is much more likely to get opened than “Reasons your newsletter isn’t successful.” But…
4. Don’t make false promises
A catchy email marketing subject line is important, but you need the body content to back it up. If your emails can’t deliver on what they promise, they’ll be deleted faster than you can say “unsubscribe”.
5. Create a sense of urgency
Subject lines that advertise phrases like “today only” or “24 hour sale” are much more likely to get immediately opened. This sense of urgency helps ensure your message will be read now rather than being put off until later, when it might be forgotten. A similar tactic to creating a sense of urgency is creating scarcity with phrases such as “limited release” or “limited quarantines”.
6. Personalize
Whenever possible, use the recipient’s name in the subject line. If you don’t want to use personalization tokens, use pronouns such as “you” and “your” to make your readers think you’re speaking directly to them.
7. Ask a question
Readers are more likely to open an email that presents them with a direct question. This helps initiate a conversation and draw them in with what you have to say. “Can you live without these beauty products?” is a much more intriguing subject line than “Beauty products you can’t live without.”