Secrets of Powerful Email Subject Lines

Email marketing is a powerful element of a marketing mix that combines digitial marketing, inbound marketing, content marketing and traditional techniques. Subject lines can make or break your campaign.

We all receive emails daily, sometimes hundreds, how will they notice yours? Will they actually open it and see what you have to say?

So you need to grab the attention of your contacts through your email subject lines. Checkout the secret ingredients we’ve uncovered to help you craft powerful email subject lines.

Develop Email Subject Lines with Four Principles:

  1. Keep it short and sweet

You’re not writing a book! Think newspaper headline. There is no reason for your title to be anywhere over 100 characters. A rule of thumb is 50 characters or fewer. Try for six words if you can.

If the title is too long, your contact won’t be able to see the entire title. Therefore, they won’t have any clue what your email is about.

A good concept to keep in mind is that the shorter your subject, the more your mail is likely to be read. Your contacts are receiving so many emails, they don’t have time to read them all. With a longer subject they might go right past your mail.

With the increasing number of people accessing their email on their smart phones and mobile devices these days, you might want to consider shortening the characters in your email subject line to as few as 20, so your subject will display properly.

2. Make it a Call to Action

Are you telling your contacts what they can do once they get to your mail? Think of your subject line as a call to action. Use verbs that grab the attention of your contacts, as well as telling them what they will expect once they land on the content.

A few suggestions on keywords for your subject line:

  • Download
  • Save
  • Meet
  • Register

3. Make it Personal

Personalisation is one of the easiest ways to provide your contacts with some sense of value. No one likes to be addressed as, Hi Loyal Customer. You should always know something about your contacts, even if it is just their name.

You should also format your email subject lines to reflect an offer or something that your contacts will want. A great way to develop personalised email content is through list segmentation. You don’t want to send your contacts an offer that they’ve already downloaded or something that does not interest them, therefore, it is important to know what offers and pages your contacts are downloading and viewing.

How to personalise:

  • Add name to subject
  • Provide something that interests that contact

4. Maintain Consistency Between Subject and Content

How many times have your opened a mail and it had nothing to do with what has highlighted within the subject? Probably once or twice. This could be the answer to why none of your contacts are actually clicking on the offers or call to actions inside.

If you take anything away from this article let it be this piece of advice, keep your content and subject consistent. What your subject promises should also correspond with what is delivered within your mail.

Still need some help?

Consider using the four ‘u’s’ approach when writing.

Subject lines should be:

  • Useful – is the promised message valuable to the reader?
  • Ultra-Specific – does the reader know what’s being promised?
  • Unique – is the promised message compelling and remarkable?
  • Urgent – does the contact feel the need to read?

To make sure you are getting the full benefit and return on your investment contact or call Public Impact, with our experience in creation of content your mails will be read.

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