7 Tips to Improve Your Email Subject Lines 

In email marketing, subject lines are often the first thing that your subscribers will see when opening an email that you’ve sent them. They’re also the first thing recipients will look at if they decide to delete your message without opening it, so it’s important to use subject lines that will catch the attention of your readers and entice them to open and read your content. Here are seven tips on how to improve your email subject lines so that you can have more success with your campaigns and increase your click-through rates (CTR).

How to optimize your subject lines

Nowadays, email marketing has changed significantly. According to a study by Experian Marketing Services and deliverability experts Return Path, 83% of marketing emails are now opened on mobile devices, compared with 64% in 2012. And at each step in the customer journey your subject line is one of your best opportunities for getting that customer back into your funnel. A good subject line can draw attention and intrigue potential customers into opening an email while a bad one will have them hitting delete faster than you can say marketing spam. So how do you write good ones? We asked our Customer Success Team (CSS) experts what they think makes a great subject line and why they believe it works well...

How often should you send emails?

It’s true that you have a finite number of subscribers you can’t email everyone every time. Plus, some people will ignore or forget about your emails if you send them too often. However, that doesn’t mean sending a few emails per day (or even week) is enough. A better rule of thumb is to only contact your readers when you have something they want to read. Be smart about it and make sure each email you send resonates with your readers. If it doesn’t, maybe try sending again after a week has passed your content might be more relevant in their eyes now than it was before.

How do you segment your audience?

If you’re sending out emails to a segmented audience say, only subscribers who live in Seattle or only people who opened your last email then, yes, think about how you could appeal to their interests and what they might find interesting. But if you’re just blasting emails indiscriminately, don’t bother. In general, subject lines that contain simple statements for example, hey [first name], [optional second sentence]! tend to perform best.
 
Of course, you want your emails to be interesting and compelling, but don’t make that your top priority. Ask yourself how you can use an email subject line to entice subscribers into opening an email they might otherwise have ignored. It should contain a statement, or at least some sort of question with a question mark for example, Say Goodbye To Bad Hair Days?  so it immediately grabs subscribers’ attention and compels them to open it. Or ask if there’s something in your last message they didn’t understand or found confusing. Since most people get dozens of emails a day, asking for feedback like that can help make them feel important and encourage them to open another email from you in the future.

What are good open rates?

Having a good open rate is essential for marketing emails, but figuring out what exactly constitutes a good one can be difficult. That’s because there are lots of different factors at play email client, location, time of day and more that could be impacting your results. The average email open rate hovers around 20 percent; however, you can improve your numbers by sending better subject lines. Here are seven tips for doing just that

 The more relevant your subject line is, typically, the higher your open rate will be. For example, a study by MailChimp showed that emails with personalized greetings saw an average open rate of 24.5 percent, whereas those without only registered 18.8 percent. Even if you don’t have time to customize every greeting which is fine! at least consider doing so for a few recipients and comparing your results.

What are the best times of day to send emails?

There is an old saying that timing is everything. In relation to email marketing, that statement couldn’t be truer. According to data from Experian Marketing Services and The Radicati Group, 75% of email users check their messages on mobile devices  with most checking their inboxes at least once a day. At Business Insider, we found via our internal data that most readers open emails at 10:30 a.m., which means you should schedule your emails accordingly if you want them seen (and opened) by as many people as possible. However, not everyone checks their emails equally throughout the day. The Radicati Group reports 58% of North American consumers check their email in morning hours while 32% do so in afternoon hours and just 10% during evening hours.

What makes a good campaign creative?

Of course, subject lines don’t matter if you haven’t already built up a massive audience. That’s why it’s also important to remember that quality over quantity is key when it comes to your email list. With so many companies selling opt-in lists, quality should be your number one priority when building your list; because let’s face it, most people only look at their inboxes in between trips through spam folders. In order for them to make a purchase or click on your link, they have to feel like they know you and like what you offer and that means having a clean list of engaged subscribers who are excited by what they see in their inboxes every day.

How much should you personalize your emails?

It’s great to personalize your emails, but make sure you don’t overdo it. If you try too hard to be friendly and end up coming off as inauthentic, you’ll lose trust with readers and they won’t convert. Remember: They signed up for your email list because they want information from you, not because they feel like they know you personally. As a general rule of thumb, keep it casual and refrain from calling recipients by their first name (use you instead). Most importantly: Make sure that each email makes sense without having any personal details at all.

Conclusion

When it comes to writing headlines and subject lines, consider your audience. Headlines can generate a good deal of traffic from social media sharing and even from organic search engines. That said, if you’re too wordy or complicated, people may not understand your message immediately. The best email subject lines have clarity and call-to-action so recipients will read further. Remember that if you don’t give enough details in your headline or body text, it can turn readers off so they skip over your content altogether. Consider what they would want or need out of an email when drafting a new one and then craft something that addresses those needs immediately.