These days, no organization can afford to overlook the importance of email marketing. It's among the most efficient and cost-effective ways to reach your target audience. But even the best marketing strategy can fail if your email's subject line doesn't encourage people to open it.
So how can you create the best email subject line? Here are a few tips:
Keep It Short
People are busy and don't have time to read long email subject lines. So aim to keep your subject line short and sweet so that people are more likely to read it and open the message.
"The ideal length of an email subject line varies between mobile, desktop, and tablet devices, so keep this in mind as you craft the perfect one-liner for your sales email. On average, the maximum subject line is about 60 characters long before it gets cut off by the email provider. Campaign Monitor recommends a subject line of 41 characters so that each word appears on desktop, mobile, and tablet devices."
Source: HubSpot
Use Personalization
Personal greetings are a great way to make people feel special and encourage them to open your email. Types of personalization you can use include the recipient's first name or the name of their business or organization if doing B2B email marketing. We really like the tools available in the HubSpot marketing platform for personalization.
This can be done in MailChimp, but it is not as straightforward.
Add A Keyword
Including a keyword in your subject line can help your email stand out in people's inboxes. Ensure the keyword you choose is relevant to your content, so readers don't get confused or misled.
Ask A Question
Questions are a great way to get people's attention. They make people curious and encourage them to open your email to find out the answer.
Use A Number Or Statistic
People love numbers. Adding a number to your subject line makes it seem essential and encourages people to open it immediately. For example, "8 of 10 people agree..." or "35% of women say..."
Use An Emotional Appeal
People are emotional creatures. When you make an emotional appeal for them to take action, they're more likely to listen. Try using a subject line that evokes an emotional response, such as "Don't miss out!" or "Act now!"
Make An Offer
An offer is a great way to get people's attention and encourage them to open your email. Ensure your offer is relevant to your content, and readers will find it beneficial. Types of offers could include coupon codes, free shipping, or a discount. Adding a deadline to your offer is a great way to get people's attention and encourage them to open your email. Ensure the deadline is relevant to your content so that people will be more likely to take advantage of it.
Think about running A/B test emails. This means using different variations of your email to see which performs best.
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While editing your variations, you can consider varying:
- Offers: experiment with the medium of the offer. You might test an eBook versus a whitepaper or video.
- Copy: experiment with the formatting and style of the content. You could test plain paragraphs versus bullet points or a longer block of text vs a shorter block of text.
- Email sender: try sending the email from an employee's email address instead of a generic department address.
- Image: try out different images to see how the conversion rate is influenced.
- Subject line: play around with the length of the subject line or add personalization.
- Whole email: the fastest way to achieve drastic results and produce a landing page that drives a lot of conversions is to test the entire email. Make iterations to the whole email that affect image placement, subject line, and its copy. Once you have a statistically significant result pointing to the variation that performed better, you can continue optimizing through smaller tweaks.
- Source: HubSpot
Use A Teaser
A teaser is a great way to create curiosity and encourage people to open your email. Make sure the teaser is relevant to your content so that people will be more likely to read it.
Use A Positive Tone
Using positive language and tone in your subject line is a great way to make people feel good about opening your email. For example, "You're going to love this..." or "This is going to make your day!"
Consider using a tool like Grammarly to help you determine your tone.
Use A Call To Action
A call to action - or CTA - is an excellent way to encourage people to take action after reading your email. For example, "Click here to learn more" or "Reserve your spot."
When creating your email subject line, keep these tips in mind to create the best possible result. Using various techniques for subject lines, you can increase your chances of getting people to open and act on your email. And that's what it's all about - getting those coveted conversions!