Fifty characters are all that stands between you and the success of your next email campaign.
Why? Because 50 characters is all the space you have in a typical subject line. You have 50 characters – or less – to catch the attention of your readers, attract them to open your email and take immediate action. How could something so small make or break the success of your whole campaign? Because potential recipients use the subject line to decide whether to open or delete an email or, worse yet, report the email as spam. The need of characters in subject lines makes writing them a challenge. But it’s worth doing well because a good subject line can get your email opened in a flash. With so much at stake, marketers need a quick reference tool for developing subject lines that get the desired result: opened emails.
Rule 1: Read the News
Subject lines, where possible, should clearly state what your readers can expect from your email, what’s in it for them or what you want them to do as a result of the email. And with so much competition for a reader’s attention, your subject line must stand out from the rest in a relevant way. Emulating news headlines can be a good starting point in the development of subject lines.
Rule 2: Focus on the Objective
What is the objective, or end goal, of your email marketing program? In most cases your end goal is not necessarily high open rates, but to have subscribers take a specific and measurable action. Determine what that one action is, and make sure all components of your email – especially the subject line – will achieve your objective.
Rule 3: Leverage the “From” Address
The “From” address tells the recipient who sent the email, and the subject line sells the recipient on opening it. So take the time to consider the best use of the “From” address, based on the goal of the email and the audience to whom it’s being sent.
Rule 4: Mention Key Information First
Most email preview panes allow for 50 characters’ worth of space in the subject line area, and anything beyond that gets cut off. So make sure the cut-off doesn’t occur in a crucial word, such as a price or date. One way to see how your subject line might look in your recipients’ inboxes is to send yourself an email with your proposed subject line. Of course, each inbox view is configured differently, but this is an easy way to see if your subject line is off the mark.
Rule 5: Personalize
Personalized subject lines are a simple way to secure the interest and action of your recipients. Subject lines can be personalized based on the product or content preferences of recipients, or based on their interests, past purchases, Web visits or links clicked. Where appropriate, use of recipients’ first names can be a very effective form of personalization as well.
Rule 6: Go Even Shorter for Mobile
A Nielsen study reported that 45 percent of Web mobile use is spent checking email. Combine that with the fact that there are six billion mobile devices worldwide and you’re looking at a very significant impact on your email campaigns. Subject lines must be as succinct as possible for on-the-go mobile users. So while conventional wisdom states that email subject lines should run about 40 to 50 characters, for mobile viewing it’s the first 30 characters or so that must do all the heavy lifting – and determine whether your email gets opened or trashed.
Rule 7: Optimize for the Priority Inbox
This past year, the most popular email providers launched new changes to their email services that allow users to manage and control their inbox by more prominently featuring the most relevant emails and filtering out those that are less desired. If your subject lines aren’t compelling, your emails will quickly be deleted.
Plus, depending on the length of your subject line, the first few words of your message may also be displayed – up to about 70 characters total. This means that your snippet text, also known as a pre-header, is just as important as your subject line in getting your subscribers’ attention.
Rule 8: Urgency Drives Action
The recipients of your email are more likely to act on your offer if they have an urgent reason to do so. Where appropriate, drive urgency with messaging such as:
- Order by midnight tonight
- Last day to ensure delivery by December 24
- …to the first 25 people who take advantage of this offer
Rule 9: Lead, but Don’t Mislead
While it’s important to drive a sense of urgency and develop offers that compel action, it’s even more important to maintain your company’s integrity in every outbound communication. That means not misleading your prospects and customers with the subject line in order to get them to read or act on the call-to-action in the email.
Rule 10: “Free” is Not Evil
Yes, you can use “free” in a subject line, contrary to the urban legends out there. People still respond to the word “free,” so the increase in orders or other actions will almost always outweigh the messages lost to filtering.
Avoid using words like “free” if you include mail merge tags in your subject line. This might slow delivery of your email unless you have an impeccable sender reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Small send testing – sending to a small group before sending to your entire list to see if any blocks occur – is always a best practice.
Rule 11: Plan for Deliver-ability
There are a number of factors that affect whether your email will be delivered to the inbox or not, and most of them are within your control. The key is to plan for deliverability instead of “spraying and praying.” Contrary to what you may have heard, the greatest factor influencing the deliverability of your email is your reputation score with ISPs. If enough of your email recipients mark your emails as spam, or if you routinely use a combination of words that trigger spam filters, your emails could end up in more junk folders than inboxes, and your ISP reputation is then severely damaged.
Rule 12: Measure, Test, Analyze – Repeat
There are numerous ways to optimize your subject lines and every component of your email marketing campaigns. In all cases, the easiest and most effective way to optimize is to measure, test, analyse and then repeat that process.
Testing ultimately pays for itself in better data, improved decision making and better campaign results.
Test, test, test:
Testing is an often overlooked but critically important step in email marketing. While it takes more time at the onset of each new campaign, testing ultimately pays for itself in better data, improved decision-making and, ultimately, better campaign results. You need to stand out each time, yet be familiar to the reader. How do you find out what subject lines work best? Test. You want to make sure you’re extending the offer that will yield the best results against the right audience segment, but how do you know what that offer is? Test.
Bonus Success Tip: Make Email an Ongoing Conversation
It’s easy to deploy one email and then move on to the next, but there are many reasons why this is not an optimal strategy. Sending one email is like starting a conversation and walking away. Instead, plan a series of email “touches” or use social media to keep the conversation going. These tactics begin a conversation and build interest over time: Sending one email is like starting a conversation and walking away.
The Bottom Line
Yes, this seems like a lot of fuss over 50 little characters. But those 50 characters will have a significant impact on the success or failure of your email. They help determine whether your emails will get past spam filters and into the inbox, and if your emails will be opened and acted upon once they get there. And with the added challenges that burgeoning use of mobile devices and priority inboxes bring to the email marketer’s table, the stakes are all the higher. They may be just 50 little characters, but it pays to get them right.