You might be promoting the deal of the century, but if your email subject line isn’t right, it will never get seen. Email marketing can still be a very effective medium for building an active and loyal customer base. After all, billions of us regularly use email as a way to correspond with colleagues, friends and family – a number which dwarfs social media figures.
Once your customers subscribe to your email newsletter however, you still have the challenge of competing with a busy inbox to get your message read. Your good reputation will go a long way to being noticed among the press – but it’s then up to your subject line to persuade your customer to invest their time to open it.
The following tips are designed to help you improve the effectiveness of your email subject lines.
Make it Personal
Where possible, personalise your email subject line by incorporating the recipient’s name or where possible, their buying history. A personalised subject line goes a long way to helping you stand out from the crowd by treating customers as individuals – not just an email address.
Today Only
Create a sense of urgency to help pique your customers’ interest. Why leave an email until later (then forget about it) if it requires your immediate action to snap up the deal. Use this technique sparingly though; attaching time sensitive importance to every message will soon wear thin.
The Perfect Alternative To…
Be imaginative in order to generate curiosity. Some creativity is needed to craft your ‘story headline’ in as little words as possible. Whether you intend to solve a problem, save them money or improve productivity, the key is to provide a snippet which will prompt them to open your email to find out more.
Get Straight To the Point
While the word count is more generous than it used to be, it’s still important to keep your email subject line short and to the point. As with good copy writing, a good rule of thumb is ‘less is more’.
Test, Rinse, Repeat
Monitoring your email open rates is a pretty good indicator which email subject lines are working best for you. This doesn’t mean to say copy the exact wording – but use a similar theme or call to action in order to attract your subscriber’s attention.
Taking time to review the performance of your previous email subject lines in order to help craft your next newsletter headline is time well spent. If you would like to learn more, or need help improving your email newsletter marketing, contact us here.
