Writing an email marketing program subject line is easy, right? If you said ‘yes’, for your own sake, keep reading. It’s far from an easy thing to accomplish grabbing your contacts attention, convincing them to take some action all within 50 characters. If you want to have success as an email marketer then learning how to write one is going to be the corner stone to your success.
Many people use the subject line to establish whether or not to remove an email or mark it as spam. So those 50 characters in the subject line have to be just right, because a good subject line will get your email opened.
The first challenge is coming up with something that will grab the attention of your contacts in just 50 characters. What I mean by grabbing their attention is getting the person receiving the campaign to take some kind of action that can be tracked.
Developing a trusting relationship with your contacts is the next thing to take into account. Your reader needs to know what to expect from your emails. The subject line has to appeal to the reader, so be as specific as possible. If you are generic in your subject line, it is likely you won’t get the reaction you want. Let your contacts know the subject of the email or how to take advantage of the offers in the email right in your subject line.
There are probably hundreds of emails that your contacts are constantly sifting through. A contact’s time is valuable to them. They will take the time to open your email as long as you remind them why they signed up for your email marketing campaigns in the first place.
The next step is to determine what is the purpose of your email. What is it that you want your contacts to do? Then make sure that you subject line properly expresses that. If you want to increase your sales by having contacts take advantage of a promotion, then your subject line shouldn’t say something about a new product line you have in. Your subject line should say something like “come in and get 50% off”.
Looking in reverse at your email marketing program reports and statistics history is something else that will help you succeed. When doing so, seek out email campaigns that brought forth the greatest conversion. Then determine what you’ve said in your subject line. It’s entirely possible that your subject line had a great deal to do with why this campaign found success.
Take what you’ve learned from your stats and play around with the subject lines. Test them out on different portions of your contact list. You’ll get some incredible insight on the exact things that attract your contacts’ attention.
While planning your email campaign you should be determining the focus or purpose of that email. Once you’ve got that down, state that purpose in your subject line. This will make sure that your emails are more relevant to your contacts and can end up increasing the measurable action that contacts take as response to your emails.
Email marketing subject lines can be a handful, but adhering to some simple email marketing principles will greatly improve your chances of success.
Rudy Barell is a Senior Business Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing software used by businesses around the globe. Experience how easy it is to build your mailing list, create eye-catching emails and track your success using detailed reports with complete email marketing solutions. Try it free!
