The Essence Of Email Marketing Subject Lines That Work
The content of the Email marketing subject line is exceptionally important. It should compel your audience to click and open your Emails.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
If your audience does not open up your Email, then your efforts will be for naught, and you may as well have not sent any Email at all.
Let’s dig into Email Marketing subject lines that work.
After you finished reading this article, you should understand why subject lines are important in your Email Marketing efforts. You’ll also get to learn about effective and compelling email subject lines to use for your Email Marketing campaigns.
The 3 Critical Components
According to Bryan Gudmundson, there are 3 primary components when crafting an Email subject line: Content, character, and strategy. These 3 should be considered as part of your Email Marketing Subject line best practice creation process.
However, you need to give careful consideration when crafting your Email subject lines. What works for me, may not work for you. What works for you, may not work for Bryan.
With this in mind, and in my own opinion, the most important thing when creating your Email subject line, is to understand everything about your your audience – demographics, psychographics, what they had for dinner, where they live, how many kids they have, how much money they make, what they like & dislike, what car they drive. etc.
You get the picture!
Anyway, back to Bryan…
Bryan created an excellent article on the philosophy of creating Email Marketing subject lines that get opened. His article topics covering these best practices:
- Speak to the individual. Try tailor your subject lines to the consumer’s characteristics, preferences and interests. For example, their name or location can draw them in to read your the email.
- Mirror shopping behavior. As seasons change, so does your audiences intent. Align yourself strategically with their intent and behavior.
- Be direct. Never mislead your audience. Tell them what you want from them. Let them know what’s coming up in the actual email.
- Urgent and exclusive. Urgency, curiously and exclusivity are powerful methods to get those open rates higher. Use them when appropriate.
- Mobile. Mobile. Mobile. The world is moving (moved) into that space. Make sure your audience gets a mobile friendly version of your Email.
Obviously you need excellent content in your subject line, but focus on these and your chances increase of getting higher Email open rates.
Email Subject Line Best Performers
In another article, Amanda MacArthur gives you helpful information to follow when trying to create the subject line of your Email Marketing campaign. She shows you some of the best subject lines for Email Marketing, and includes a helpful, 5 star “Winner” rating system:
- The Reason Why Email subject line. A subject line showing the rationale – the reason.
- The Benefit Email subject line. Forget the features. Emphasize the benefit.
- The Question Email subject line. Humans are curious. Creating curious intrigue can get your audience to dig deeper.
- The Testimonial Email subject line. Social proof can be an effective method to double click, even in a subject line.
- The How-To Email subject line. How-to’s can be effective, especially when your audiences wants something specific revealed.
- The New Email subject line. It’s natural human behavior to want-in on something “New”.
- The Fascination Email subject line. This is a variation of the question subject line, which create a “discovery” intrigue.
- The Targeted Email subject line. Hits at the core of people. People want to read about themselves.
- The List Email subject line. Lists echo “convenience” and “time savers”.
- The Seasonal Email subject line.. In general, people like to participate in a collective of “happiness”, “sharing”, and “gift giving”.
- The Issue based Email subject line. Getting right to the point.
- The Urgency based Email subject line. Creating anxiety can help towards open rates.
You can read the full article at “The 17 Best Email Subject Lines For Increasing Open Rates [+Video], by Amanda MacArthur . It explains the different subject lines you can use, in more detail.
Wrap It
Those on your Email list are special. Regardless of their intent, they took the time and entrusted you to their contact information.
Don’t assume they will open your Email. In fact, statistically speaking, only 20% of them will click to read. (Remember to periodically clean up your Email list.)
You will need to work hard to get your Email’s opened, and it starts with knowing your audience.
Once you understand your audience, crafting an amazing subject line should result in higher Email Marketing open rate:
- Be extremely conscious about the subject line content.
- Write the subject line from your audiences perspective.
- Write for them and to them. Not about them.
- Create intrigue, urgency, and exclusivity; But be genuine.
Over to you. If you’re launching a website or planning your digital marketing efforts, start with a sensible digital marketing budget and dead over to our strategic planning process so you can get a digital marketing roadmap to grow your business.