The most challenging part of email marketing is writing subject lines that intrigue people to want to open your emails. How many times do we receive marketing emails and never open them? We all know the answer to that question, and it’s because the subject lines just don’t speak to our needs.
If you use email marketing or are contemplating its use. Think how can I write an effective email subject line that will make the recipient open your email? Here are 5 guidelines that may assist your marketing team:
1. The shorter the subject line the better
Preferably you want to keep your subject line to a maximum 50 characters or less.
2. A big NoNo is capitalization and exclamation points.
Bottom line here is we’re already an intrusion so yelling via email will only hurt the cause. In addition it’s considered rude to communicate writing in this format. It can make your email come off very spam oriented and obnoxious.
3. Key words that you want to avoid. Word of advice words with positive impact will result in increased open rates, and words with negative impacts can hurt those same rates.
Certain words will not only land you in a Spam filter, but also hurt your open rate. The words to avoid are: “%”, “sex”, “vacation”, “free,” “help,” “click here”, “test”, “assistance,” “mortgage”, “insurance”, “act now”, “casino”, “limited time”, “coupons”, “click now”, “stop”, “cash”, “open immediately “and “donate.” Also don’t use numbers in place of letter and avoid expletives such as (this one’s a no-brainer).
4. Share, don’t create subject lines of buyer beware
Be candid and upfront about what you’re saying, create interest do not sell. Write the subject line based on the features and benefits of your service/product. As an example, “A+ Rated Carrier no minimum account size” is more compelling than “Hot New Insurance Carrier minimum $50,000 accounts only”
5. Discovery, asking questions can be good
An effective technique for writing a subject line can be to ask the recipient a discovery question that they’ll answer “yes” to. By creating a “yes” question, the recipient may want to investigate how you can solve their challenge. For example, “Did your umbrella change from follow form to excess?” makes the reader say “YES!” and want to learn more about your email.
And as a final comment you may want to refer to an article I posted back in January 2012 about the common mistakes of email subject lines https://larryneilson.com/email-subject-lines-common-mistakes