Since the dawn of the internet, email marketing has become an essential tool for spreading the word about your company and reaching out to contacts. However, there’s no point in sending any emails if they’re not going to be read. Follow these proven tactics for writing email subject lines that catch the attention of your recipients.
How to Craft Perfect Email Subject Lines
Keep it Prompt
The main goal of a subject line is to entice the reader to open an email and hopefully read it. Think of the subject line as your email’s short pitch to the recipient. You need to get your message across succinctly.
If your subject line is too long, then a portion of it might be cut off in their inbox, especially on mobile devices. When that happens, it loses its intended effect. For the most part, it is a best practice to keep email subject lines under 50 characters to ensure they are always displayed in full.
If you’re finding it difficult to shorten your subject lines under 50 characters, consider which words are less important than the others and try to cut them out.
Personalize your Subject Lines
Usually, when you’re sending an email from your company, you will have at least some information about your contacts already. This information is important because it will allow you to add personalization tokens to your email subject lines.
When you add a recipient’s name or location to the subject line, you can establish a comfortable familiarity and rapport. According to research done by the Science of Email 2014, recipients are far more likely to open an email that directly references their first name or another piece of information about them.
Stay Away from Spamming Tactics
We’ve all received spam emails before, so you likely know the signs. It usually consists of all caps and exclamation points in the subject lines to create a sense of urgency that will hopefully attract you to open the email and read further.
For your business’ subject lines however, it’s a best practice to avoid this tactic. Most people have become accustomed to receiving spam or overly promotional emails and delete or ignore them instantaneously without even thinking about. Often, those types of emails will automatically go straight to a spam folder.
Highlight the Email’s Worth
When you’re sending an email that contains a special offer or incentive, make sure that you alert recipients of the value it contains. People aren’t going to open an email when they don’t think they’ll get anything out of it.
Use your subject line to highlight the exact value that the contact will get out of opening your email. Furthermore, include preview text to give a little more explanation and information. This is the text that appears below the subject line and above the fold.
If you craft subject lines correctly, you can increase your click-through rate. Just make sure you follow these tips.
