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Peter T. Britton

10 Rules You Need to Apply to Your Email Subject Lines

Updated: Mar 29, 2022

Do you write or use emails to add new customers, increase sales to your customer base, or just communicate news to the world?


Here are 10 Email Subject Line Rules You Need to Follow to increase your chances of improved open rates.


Here is some magic developed over my 30+ years as a copywriter, and for you dinosaurs like me, they will sound familiar; to all the new and novice copywriters, they will be eye-openers you can use to impress your clients with…


And to all the clients out there, these are the ingredients you need to ensure are included in all your emails and campaigns.


Rule 1: Read the newspaper

If you want to develop subject lines that result in higher open rates, pick up your local paper. Headlines usually highlight a story’s most important point with brevity, while taking the audience into consideration.


For instance, a headline about a recent political development might be written as “Trump makes history in 10 seconds.” The story itself could be about any number of events, including Donald Trump taking the oath of office.


But the headline is short and intriguing enough to compel one to read the entire article to find out exactly what happened.


Subject lines, where possible, should clearly state what your reader can expect from your email, what’s in it for them or what you want them to do as a result of the email. And with so much competition for a reader’s attention, your subject line must stand out from the rest in a relevant way. Emulating the headlines from newspapers can be a good starting point in the development of subject lines.


Rule 2: Focus on the Objective

What is the objective, or end goal, of your email marketing program?

In most cases your end goal is not necessarily high open rates, but to have subscribers take a specific and measurable action. Determine what that one action is, and make sure all components of your email – especially the subject line – will achieve your objective.


For instance:

• If your goal is for recipients to purchase from your online store directly from the email, don’t use a subject line that is informational in nature. Instead, use a clear call-to-action that emphasizes their opportunity to make a “must have” purchase.

• Look at the subject lines associated with the highest number of conversions. If you drill down into your Web analytics, you might find some clues, such as an email with a relatively low open rate but a high sales-per-order rate.


That could mean something in the subject line strongly appealed to a narrow segment of your list. You could then test variations of the same type of subject line with other audience segments.


Ideally, you should test subject lines on one small segment of your list to determine a winner for use with the larger audience. But if that is not possible, run them past an informal focus group including your marketing team, others in your department or colleagues from outside the department to get a wider view.


Writing the subject line is often the last and most hurried step in email campaign development. It should be the other way around. As you plan the email campaign, start thinking first about what will go into the subject line. That will help you retain your campaign’s focus on the objective.


Rule 3: Leverage the “From” Line

The “From” line tells the recipient who sent the email, and the subject line sells the recipient on opening it. So take the time to consider the best use of the “From” line, based on the goal of the email and the audience to whom it’s being sent.


Some basic guidelines:

• If it’s the first time you have emailed a specific audience, use a “From” line that creates a sense of familiarity and/or credibility with your potential readers. They may not be familiar with your company or brand, so you will want to use a brief “From” line that includes your company name as well as the general purpose of the email, such as: Acme Health Experts.

Coupled with a compelling subject line, this approach can generate higher open rates than a “From” line of “Acme, Inc”.

• If the “From” line lists your company name, you don’t have to repeat it in the subject line, which frees up space there. But do consider branding your subject line with the name of your newsletter, for example, so that it will stand out in the Inbox of the recipients. For instance, if the “From” line says Acme Health Experts, your subject line might say Health Wise Newsletter.

• Unless your email legitimately addresses customer service or product notification issues, refrain from using a “From” line like Acme Customer Service.


This practice can be misleading and will ultimately work against your objective.


Moreover, it will create ill will with your prospects and customer base.


Rule 4: Mention Key Information First

It sounds obvious, but it’s important to mention the most important information first when it comes to both your subject line and the email body copy itself. Why?


As the saying goes, “you only have one opportunity to make a first impression.”


With subject lines, that adage is amplified.


You have 50 characters or less to create a compelling message that prompts the recipient to both notice and open your email.


Then, you have less than two seconds to compel them to read the email. So it really is harder to do than it sounds.


Some tips:

• Keep your end goal, and the interest of the recipients, in mind: What is it that you want them to do after reading the email, and what would make them care enough to do that? If you can answer that question in 50 characters or less, you may have your subject line.

• Don’t take this advice too literally: In many cases it doesn’t make sense to try to cram the offer and call-to-action into 50 characters. In those cases, don’t take the “mention key information first” advice too literally. Instead, focus on the intent of the advice: mention something that makes your recipient care.

• Most email preview panes allow for 50 characters’ worth of space in the subject line area, and anything beyond that gets cut-off. So make sure the cut-off doesn’t occur in a crucial word, such as a price or date. One way to see how your subject line might look in your recipients’ Inboxes is to send yourself an email with your proposed subject line.


Of course, each Inbox view is configured differently, but this is an easy way to see if your subject line is off the mark.


Rule 5: Personalize

Personalized subject lines are a simple way to secure the interest and action of your recipients. Subject lines can be personalized based on the product or content preferences of the recipient, or based on their interests, past purchases, Web visits or links clicked.

Where appropriate, use of the recipients’ first name can be a very effective form of personalization as well.


When personalizing, be sure to consider the following:

• Be careful when using past purchases to personalize because the purchase could have been a gift for someone else and might not relate to your reader’s real interests.

Always make it easy for readers to find and update their data and preferences.

• If you elect to include the first name of your recipients, take the time to go through the database and make sure that you actually have the first name for every record.


Also assure that the names in your database use proper capitalization such as Alice instead of alice. If the database is not 100% accurate, it’s better to not use first name personalization.


Rule 6: Urgency Drives Action

The recipients of your email are more likely to act on your offer if they have an urgent reason to do so.


Where appropriate, drive urgency with messaging such as:

• Order by midnight tonight

• Last day to ensure delivery by December 24th

• …to the first 25 people who take advantage of this offer


You may also want to use urgency and deadlines as part of a planned series of emails. For example, on Monday incorporate “5 Days Left…” and then on Thursday follow it with “Only 24 Hours Remain...”.


However, don’t overuse or misrepresent deadlines, as it will train your recipients to wait until the last minute to act or, worse yet, it will sour them to your offers entirely. But do consider driving urgency where it’s relevant.


Rule 7: Lead, but don’t mislead

While it’s important to drive a sense of urgency and develop offers that compel action, it’s even more important to maintain your company’s integrity in every outbound communication.


That means not misleading your prospects and customers with the subject line in order to get them to read or act on the call-to-action in the email.


Here are some things you don’t want to do:

• Stretch the truth in the subject line or promise more than the email can deliver

• Make grand claims that readers will find hard to comply with in order to get a special offer or benefit

• Offer one thing and deliver something different than what is described (or deliver nothing at all)


Rule 8: “Free” is not Evil

Yes, you can use “free” in a subject line, contrary to the urban legends out there.


People still respond to the word “free”; so, the increase in orders or other actions will almost always outweigh the messages lost to filtering.


But be sure to follow the best practices listed below to keep your email message from getting caught in spam filters:

• Don’t make “free” the first word

• Don’t use the word “free” in conjunction with an exclamation point

• Refrain from spelling “free” in all caps


Rule 9: Plan for Deliverability

There are a number of factors that affect whether your email will be delivered to the Inbox or not, and most of them are in your control. The key is to plan for deliverability instead of “spraying and praying.”


Contrary to what you may have heard, the greatest factor influencing the deliverability of your email is your reputation score with ISPs. If enough of your email recipients mark your email as spam, or if you routinely use a combination of words that trigger spam filters, your emails could end up in more junk folders than Inboxes, and your ISP reputation is then severely damaged.


Here are a few simple things you can do with subject lines and email content to impact the deliverability of your campaigns:

• There’s a fine line between “catchy” and “spammy.” Run your email subject line and body copy through a content checker to identify any spam-like words, phrases or construction. The content checker will tell you which types of phrases to avoid.

• Two tricks that could trip a spam filter: Subject lines in all capital letters and using more exclamation points than necessary (both look unprofessional, too.). In fact, I recommend not using exclamation points at all if you can avoid it.


Rule 10: Measure, Test, Analyze – Repeat

There are numerous ways to optimize your subject lines, and every component of your email marketing campaigns. In all cases, the easiest and most effective way to optimize is to measure, test, analyze and then repeat that process.


Here are just a few of the ways you can do this:


Measure everything that moves.


In order to use data to support better decisions, you must have meaningful data to analyze.


But where do you get the data? The answer: From anywhere you want – as long as you establish data capture points beforehand.


For instance, if you want to understand which of two test subject lines result in the best conversion rate, then you need a way to track responses from Email A differently than Email B. That may mean assigning a unique source code to the landing page associated with each of the emails, or it may mean assigning some other unique identifier such as a promotional code.


Regardless, you need to capture the data that will indicate which of the two subject lines better meets your objective. Then, compare the two sets of data to determine the results.


Two key points:

• Be sure to use a large enough sample size with each test group so that your results are statistically accurate – 300 or more responses per test group is generally considered viable from an analysis perspective.

• Be careful to change just one variable across test cells, so you can definitively determine the cause of any change in results.


One Final Tip: Test, test, test

Testing is an often overlooked but critically important step in email marketing. While it takes more time at the onset of each new campaign, testing ultimately pays for itself in better data, improved decision-making and, ultimately, better campaign results.


You need to stand out each time, yet be familiar to the reader.


How do you find out what subject lines work best?


Test.


You want to make sure you’re extending the offer that will yield the best results against the right audience segment, but how do you know what that offer is?


Test.


Some testing ideas include:

• Negative subject lines vs. positive ones (“We hate to see you go” v. “Newsletter subscription offer”)

• Challenger vs. champion offers (test your best-performing campaign against a new challenger)

• Personalization vs. no personalization

• Mention of price or savings vs. no mention of price or savings


Review subject-line performance over your last several campaigns or newsletters

• Split your list randomly into “A” and “B” cells and try a different subject line in each. Then, use the metrics from each segment to determine which subject line(s) delivered the action you wanted – the most conversions, the highest average sale per order, the highest click-through rate, etc.

• Once you have a “champion” subject line, introduce a “challenger” and test again.


Use data to support better decisions – that makes you more efficient and more effective.

If you want to learn my very special secret ingredient that always – I mean ALWAYS - increases click through rates from your emails, send me an email

(PeterTBritton@novuscom.net) with the subject line, “Email Secret” and I will reveal it for you to apply yourself!


Let me know if you want my secret success ingredient…


Peter T. Britton

Idea Generator. Wordsmith. Resultant.

www.WhyGreatWordsMatter.ca

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