Six steps to a better subject line / Stuart Armstrong,MailPerformance UK

Together with the From line, the email subject line serves as your headline.

The combination of these two key elements will determine your customer’s likelihood of reading further.The From line reveals who you are and hopefully reminds your customers why the email has landed in their mailbox. The subject line takes this further and should compel your readers to open the email and find out more about what you have to say to them.   www.mailperformance.co.uk

• A Compelling subject line. You have decided on the goal of your email, whether increasing open rates and conversions or to improve and consolidate brand awareness and the relationship between your business and your customers. Now you need to write a subject line that conveys your message, compelling the reader to open the email. Often a sense of urgency or timeliness is a useful device. You must give the recipient a good reason to take the step of opening your email and spend time reading your message, sooner rather than later.

• Subject line teasers. A very useful tactic is to pose a question in the subject line. If the teaser is relevant to the viewer’s needs then they are more likely to open the email in order to discover the answer and how it can benefit them.

• The subject line should reflect the message content. There is little to be gained from a misleading subject line. Any misdirection will become apparent very quickly and the email is likely to be closed and your relationship with your customer damaged. If the message content differs widely from that promised in the subject line your credibility with your customers will be damaged and they are less likely to open and read subsequent mails.
• Is there an ideal subject line length? The short answer to this is no. The relationship that you have built up with your customers and the offering to them will determine the length of the subject line that works best for your campaigns. However, as always, there are a number of factors that will affect what works best. Truncation is a problem that affects longer subject lines. Many email and webmail clients – e.g. Yahoo – will only allow short subject lines. And so the ends of longer subject lines are cut off. This can kill the impact of a subject line if the wording has not been carefully thought out. Testing the email in many email and web clients is always advisable. A solution to this is front loading the subject line, so that the key points are always visible in the inbox. With the increase in emails being received and viewed on mobile devices the problem of truncation is important and should be addressed.
   
  • Keeping in mind the many and varied email clients and devices that your emails will be read on it is useful to run your wording through a spam checker. Whilst it is true that content is no longer the key driver in the junking of your emails, it still plays an important role, especially with Google’s Gmail email client. Also, the goal of your email is, ultimately, to increase customer engagement with your brand, it is crucial that you avoid as far as possible your email looking like spam. If the subject line makes you think of a spam email, then it is a good idea to re-word it.

A personalised email with poor quality checking on the names could end in disaster. Another factor at play here is, again, the relationship that you have with your customers. Would personalisation change the mood of previous communications, perhaps take it in the wrong direction? Once again, this highlights the necessity of always testing your ideas on a sample of your data before committing to sending to your entire database.

If you want your object to be as impacting as possible, you should first create different objects and test them by using split testing. The latter consists of testing each object on approximately 10% of your contact database. The object creating the higher opening rate will then be chosen as the main one. This functionality is included in MailPerformance.