Email is one of the key tools you have for communicating with your customers. But in a world where everyone is bombarded constantly, how do you stand out?
With such a volume of communications and with the growing trend for collecting emails on mobile devices the first – and perhaps only – part of the email that you have to get their attention is the subject line.
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So how do you write the perfect email marketing subject line?
Be clear
The subject line of your email is basically ‘bonsai marketing’ – you have to distill everything you want to convey, plus get them to act on it (by opening the email) in perhaps a maximum of ten words. This is art.
Along with the name of the sender (see below), the subject line is the first – and on mobile possibly only – indication the recipient has as to what the email is about: so be clear.
If you need someone to do something, say so. If they are going to get something, tell them.
If you can, do what LinkedIn does and not only spell it out clearly, but offer a tantalizing bit of information about lies in the email.
Getting too wordy and non-specific can make the email very unappealing. This one here was only opened so I could take a picture of it.
I would have ignored it otherwise as I don’t understand it. It was unsolicited and not about something I am that into. They lost me.
Be personal
It is a given that this sort of communications should – nay has to – be personal, but there’s personal and there is personalized. Personalised emails are pretty much bog standard: Anyone can put this
Where my name has simply been added from the database. This is standard.
Be and old friend
In other words “Don’t email out of nowhere”. It is best to try and build momentum around your ‘campaign’ so start your communication with your existing customers when they buy something.
Thank them and follow up, but tread carefully: it is a fine line between running a momentum building campaign to keep the engaged and spamming the bejesus out of them and scaring them off for ever.
Timing is everything – and nothing
So when should you send out emails? Logic would suggest Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, as this is when people claim to open and read their emails.
However, a 2012 Experian email marketing benchmark study across all industries found that recipients are surprisingly active late at night. Unique open rates averaged 21.7% from 8pm to 11:59pm and 17.6% for 12am to 4am.
Moreover, this late night group was more likely to click through, with open rates of 4.2% and 3.2%, respectively. These night owls also had the highest click through rates for all times of day.
Revenue per email was also the highest in the 8pm to 11:59pm group.
As for which day of the week performed best, emails sent on Mondays had the highest ROI, but emails sent on Friday had a higher click through rate.
Ironically, Saturday and Sunday had the lowest volume rates, but the highest open and click through rates in the study.
So even though the weekend was not the most popular time to send emails, those who opened were much more likely to engage with it and click through or purchase.
So there is no real clear concensus – and so many other factors can dictate how people respond to your emails, that the only way to really know is to test it out… which brings me neatly to the next point.
Test, test, test
It is often said that shorter subject lines garner more opens and click through, but this isn’t in fact a fact. In reality there are so many factors at work – wording, the offer itself, timing, the recipients mood – that you really can’t say. So test.
Test and test again. Try all sorts of different ways of saying the same thing and send to different groups within your email database and assess how each different subject line responds and try and understand why.
Also, on a more prosaic note, make sure you have checked very carefully what you about to send out. You don’t want this to happen.
Finally: the ‘from’ line and beyond
While the subject line is key to getting people to see and open your email, the from line (and in some cases the opening line) are also increasingly important and email clients get more sophisticated on both PC and mobile and tablet.
So here is a list within a list of some other key tips:
• Who is sending the email is also crucial to getting consumers so put the name of your company in the from field
• Lots of email marketing templates have the ‘View in your browser’ link at the top of the body. This means that it is generally the text that shows up in the ‘short preview’ section of mail clients.
Bear this in mind and consider moving the link to the bottom or slightly further down the campaign (where it might actually be noticed).
• Don’t waste the heading in the body copy of the email (the main text): make the first thing they read a link. This is essential.
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