Tips for Writing Great Email Subject Lines
People all across the country get thousands of emails every day. This probably comes as no surprise. I'm going to guess you've spent a lot of time clearing unwanted, unread emails out of your Gmail accounts...maybe even giving up and just accepting that you'll forever have an eye-waveringly high number of unread emails in your inbox.
Once you start an email marketing campaign, though, the sheer number of emails in everyone's inbox becomes annoying for a new reason: competition. If people are inundated with so many messages every day, how can you be sure they'll see and read yours?
There are a lot of factors that go into email open rates, click-through rates, and deliverability. Having a short and catchy email subject line is a great place to start.
1. Keep it short
A good email subject line is short and easily readable. You only have, on average, about 41-50 characters per email subject line before it gets cut off.
If you can't fit everything you want to say into the subject line, finish your message in the preview text. By default, email clients will show the first few lines of your email as a preview in the recipient's inbox. Most major ESPs allow you to override this preview with specific text.
2. Make it personal
You should always have a real sender name on your email account, such as:
Your name
An employee’s name
The company name
You want to be very clear about the fact that your emails are from a real person at a real company. This can help to reduce the likelihood that your emails are sent to the recipient’s spam folder.
You can also opt to personalize the subject line itself by inserting the email recipient's name into the text. Email service providers typically allow you to do this with just a few clicks.
3. Mix it up
Don't regularly reuse the same subject line over and over. If you send the same kind of missive every month, such as a sale flier or email newsletter, change the subject line each time. This variety can encourage higher open rates.
An easy way to remember this is to always craft the subject line around the content of the email, not the type of email.
You can also make small tweaks to your subject lines to help improve the open rates. This could include:
Switching from sentence case to Title Case (or vice versa)
Adding emoji
Using personalization for the first time
Using new punctuation like an exclamation point or hyphens (but don’t go overboard!!!!!!)
When making a change for the first time, it's a good idea to use A/B testing to determine whether the original or new version performed the best.
4. DON'T SHOUT
One change you don't want to make is switching from lowercase to all capital letters. This is, of course, the internet version of shouting. It can also make your email look “spammy” and keep it from reaching the inbox.
Crafting the perfect email subject line can feel daunting at first. With time, practice, and the help of your ESP's testing tools, though, you'll get the hang of it. And if you don't want to go through the trial and error of figuring out the right kind of email subject lines for your business, we can help! Take a peek at our services or schedule a strategy call to learn more about how we can work together.
