Subject lines are incredibly influential in deciding the course of your email campaigns. After all they ensure whether someone even opens the campaign; your first step towards engagement. If it weren’t for a convincing subject line no would even bother to open your campaigns. Thus, Subject lines play a very pivotal role in getting the first step towards engagement.
But are subject lines that critical? Yes! Consider a normal advertisement you saw off Facebook or your TV. How long does the ad stay relevant? Only for a few moments. Now consider the fact that the inbox won’t throw out emails if they remain unopened.
Emails linger in the inbox long after they get placed. As one can never truly predict when a campaign connects with a subscriber; a strong and influential subject line can drive opens even if it takes the subscriber a few days.
A subject line is the first impression of your email marketing campaign. And as they say “first impression last”, your subject lines carry more weight-age than you would think.
Are there any rules to Subject Line creation?
Yes! And No!
This might seem slightly confusing but there are no hard & fast rules to designing a good and effective subject line. Subject lines can be interpreted in various manners, so one subject line might not suit all groups within your audience. Nevertheless, there are some elements you should steer away from when designing your subject lines.
Long and boring!
Studies conducted across various demographics depict a clear correlation between opens and length of subject lines. Ideally and statistically shorter subject lines are better at prompting opens. This is primarily because no one has got the time to read big sentences when only a few words can convey the intention of the campaign. Consider another factor; typically you can see up to 40 -60 characters on your subject line, when using a computer.
On smartphones your subject line are bound to get truncated when casually viewing the inbox. Having short subject lines that give clear and concise intentions connect better with all groups. It’s all about being visible.
It’s all psychological!
In truest essence, subject lines deal with the psyche of the individual and certain words can push the subject line further. Having subject lines designed around particular words can greatly influence a subscriber. Appropriate phrasing plays significant role in determining the effectiveness of subject lines. Here’s a compilation of various categories of keywords that can be deployed in subject lines:
- Benefit – If your subject line conveys the benefits of opening the campaign certain words out perform others. For example the word “cheapest” has a negative influence in read rates as opposed to “fastest” or “quickest”
- Clickbait – If you’ve been thinking that clickbait keywords still work their magic, you’re wrong. Clickbait words no longer influence opens, in fact they are counter-productive
- Commanding words – Commanding words are quite tricky, because no one likes to be bossed around. Words like “register”, “add” or “try” influence opens far more than “buy”, “call” or “click”
- Discount and price oriented keywords – A majority of e-commerce brands heavily rely on phrases like “2 for 1”, “clearance sale”, “half off” or mention price drops in the subject lines. The only way these subject lines works are when the discount offered is significantly large. Such words are way too common in the email ecosystem, hence it easy to look past such routine subject lines
- Urgency – Subject lines that indicate urgency generate high open rates. However phrasing still acts as an influencer. Consider two subject lines; “30% Off on Shoes, Limited time only” and “30% Off on Shoes, Expiring soon”. The former will pay better results.
Subject lines are quite a tricky affair, but one cannot undermine their worth. It’s vital to devise clever and original subject lines to get audience to open campaigns. One can truly say that Subject lines are skillful art; you have to be expressive and clever, while maintain brevity and clarity.
And as all email strategies of email marketing service provider go; you need to test, test and test some more. A/B split testing with different subject lines can give insight on which work and which don’t. Analysis of these results should aid in developing a psychological angle to identify how different groups respond to different subject lines.
Once you’re clear of varying inclinations of segments in the audience, subject line creation would be a piece of cake. But don’t stick to the same practices for every campaign; innovate to improve efficiency.
About the author
Shantam Dubey is Assistant SEO manager at iCubes.in. You can have a look at his complete profile here
Image Credit* – thephorest
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