The subject line of an email is the first – and most often the only – opportunity for the recipient to engage with your email. A strong, relevant, and captivating subject line will result in more open rates, conversions, and better connections with your readership. This article explains the 7-steps of creating great email subject lines and provides useful insights and best practices to learn the subject line game.
Step 1: Create Your Goal and Target Group.
You need to know what the overall purpose of your email campaign and audience are before you even begin developing your subject line. Once you know your purpose, it will help you decide the language, font and content of your subject line. Likewise, understanding your audience will allow you to personalize your message based on interests, needs and issues. Depending on your goal and audience, you can craft subject lines that resonate with your recipients and get them to read your emails.
Step 2: Write a Value Proposition.
A value proposition is a quick and concise introduction explaining what the reader gains or is benefiting from your email. It must cover the following questions:
What’s in it for me?
Why should I care?
Why does your email stand out?
Your subject line should express the value you offer in a way that catches the reader’s attention and makes them open your email. So, for example, if you’re emailing out a deal, your offer could be a promo, free shipping, or a special. Be sure to highlight the primary benefits and use action words to build urgency.
Step 3: Make it Brief and Concise.
The longer the subject line (50 characters or less), the more likely it will be opened since it won’t get deleted in the sender’s inbox. Be brief and concise, keep it simple, do not rush everything. Keep it simple, clear and free from slang, acronyms, or trite words that will disorient or turn your audience away. Always remember that you’re trying to pique the interest of the reader, not in the subject line.
Step 4: Personalize Your Subject Line.
Personalization is an effective means of increasing email opens and engagement. Include the address, or name of the person to whom you are sending it to, so that your subject line feels personalized and targeted to their needs. Dynamic content or merge tags can also be used to provide personal recommendations, products, or content based on a previous behavior or preference of the recipient. But beware, you don’t want it to be so individualized that it feels fake or invasive.
Step 5: Action Verbs & Power Words
Action verbs and power words add urgency, curiosity or excitement so that your subject line sounds more compelling. For instance, rather than “Our new blog article”, you could say “Understand the Secrets of Effective Email Marketing Now! It can use action verbs such as “Discover,” “Unlock,” “Boost,” “Transform” and “Maximize” to make it impactful and prompt the reader to take action. In the same manner, you can also use “Exclusive,” “Limited Time,” “Proven,” “Essential” and “Revolutionary” power words to give your subject line a more clickable edge.
Step 6: Test and Optimize
Split testing (or A/B testing) is a great way to optimize your subject lines and email performance. If you deliver two or more versions of your email to just a small segment of your list, you can see how well each subject line is opening, clicking and converting — and find out which works best. Once you’ve selected the winning subject line, you can forward it to the rest of your list. Always experiment and tweak subject lines to discover what is right for your audience and continually optimize your email marketing.
Step 7: Use Best Practices and Avoid Spammy Approaches.
And lastly, make sure you follow the best email marketing tips and spammy practices in your subject lines. Below are some guidelines for how you can write subject lines in a way that doesn’t violate any spam laws and policies:
1. Caps Lock, Punctuation Frenzy, Capitals, Special Characters
To write all caps or to use a few exclamation points is aggressive. It even sends spam filters screaming a warning. That will at least make these emails seem less real to the sender. Traditional capitalization and limited punctuation keep the subject lines neat and tidy.
2. Don’t Use Headings to Deceive or Lie: Do Not Use Headings to deceive.
This may sound like a great idea to create that catchy subject line, but it will not benefit your brand credibility. The subject line should be representative of the content of your email. You might just start receiving a couple of unsubs and complaints that will devastate your sender reputation.
3. Be Precise
The Subject of your email is never about the content. If you claim a discount in the subject line, deliver it inside the email. The bad subject lines that don’t match up with what is inside equate to unsubscribes and bounce rates, which are the things you don’t want to happen to your email campaign.
4. Avoid Spam Filter Trigger Words
This also risks inciting spam filters that send your email to the junk folder before anyone has a chance to read it. Be careful of your statements like “Free,” “Guaranteed”, “Get started,” “Click here” and “Win.” Write with words that suggest worth or an important feature of your email, not exclamation points.
5. Limit Personalization Tokens and Size – Keep it Under Control
Personalization can increase engagement, but too much can look like junk mail. Even long subject lines are paused, particularly on mobile, so keep your subject lines short-better yet 50 characters or less. This will ensure that your subject line can easily be understood and that your message is not lost in translation.
Conclusion:
The importance of composing an effective email subject line is not overstated when it comes to a competitive inbox world. In this paper, we provide a 7-step process to increase your email opens, response, and marketing performance. The process includes figuring out what you want to accomplish and who you want to serve, creating a value proposition, keeping the subject line short and sweet, individualizing it, adding action verbs and impactful words, tagging and optimizing, and following best practices. Because your subject line is the first (and often only) place to strike up a connection, you need to put in the effort to make sure it makes a lasting impression.
