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Three surefire ways to improve your subject lines
Can the importance of your subject line be overstated? Probably not. After the From address, it's the second most important factor in determining whether or not people open your emails. That means the subject line deserves your attention.
Yet, despite all the advice on the Internet, there isn't a tried-and-true checklist of how to write the best possible subject line. So how do you write subject lines that will get past spam filters, into email inboxes and emails opened? While we can't give you exact advice for exact results, there are three things you can do that will ensure your subject lines are more effective: be relevant, be appropriate and be willing to test.
Be relevant:
Some email marketing agencies will tell you to include a person's name in the subject line, but it takes more than a name to be relevant. If it's June and your B2B customers are focused on the ending of the fiscal year, use a subject line that's relevant to that concern. Or if it's Friday afternoon and you're an outdoor retailer marketing to your spontaneous audience, you're relevant when your subject line ties right in with them wondering how they'll spend their weekend.
Be appropriate:
When we say "be appropriate," we mean to both your email content and your audience. Make sure your subject line fits both. Your subject line must reflect what's in the email, and work for your audience. An email newsletter will do better with an informational subject line, while a slightly more sales-y subject line works better for an email promotion. Subject line length comes into play when you're being appropriate too. It depends on what you really want to maximize: your open rates or your click throughs. For more on this topic, see our blog post on subject line length.
Be willing to test:
Just as we can't overstate the importance of the subject line, we can't overemphasize how important it is to test, test and test again. Use A/B testing to determine your best subject line. But be clear on what your goals are: You might get a higher open rate with one subject line, but a higher conversion rate with the other. For more on how to test, see our blog post on A/B split tests.
Also test your email subject line for spamminess, because what goes in that little box can affect your deliverability.
For an easy-to-use tool visit:
www.localnews.biz/subjectline/validatesubjectline.asp
Rendering tip
Ensure email size
To make sure your email stays the size youwant and renders the way you want, tag all assets with sizes. That means your tables, images, fonts, horizontal rules, anything you're embedding into the html. |
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