The Importance of Email Subject Lines

People may not admit to judging a book by its cover, but they do judge an email by its subject line.

Why Email Subject Lines Are Important

Time is valuable. In just a few words your subject line needs to convince your customer that opening your email is worth their time. Up to 35% of email recipients open emails based on their interest being grabbed by the subject line. This percentage is quite high when you consider the majority of emails opened would take the form of a personal email from friends, work or acquaintances. Having a compelling email subject makes perfect sense; your customer filters valuable content from spam in just seconds using email subject lines alone.

The subject line of an email has the important job of conveying the content of your email marketing efforts and their value to your receiver. Your carefully curated content or offer will not be read if your customer is not enticed to open the email.

What can we do to improve open rates?

Now that we know that email subject lines have been shown to directly affect email open rates, how do we make a simple subject line more attractive? Below we have outlined tried and tested methods for increasing email engagement and open rates by optimising your email subject line.

1. Create Urgency

Don’t wait! This one is, not to miss!? Fear of loss has been used as an effective sales technique for years. As a sales and marketing technique, email and your EDM’s subject title are no different. Create a need for an immediate call to action with persuasive language and use urgency to suggest that the offered product or service is only available for a limited time. Never dismiss FOMO (fear of missing out)!

2. Personalise

Personalised subject lines can increase open rates by 22%. Personalising a subject line with a heading of a personal attribute or interest can dramatically increase email open rates. For example, “Jennifer, check out our sale shoes in your size”. The email does not have to contain shoes in Jennifer’s size but just having this in the subject line has a higher chance of getting Jennifer to open the email where she can then click on a shoe of interest that directs her to your website where she is sure to find some shoes (even if not the ones clicked) in her size.

3. Offer Value

Have a great offer? Don’t keep it to yourself! Put your best foot forward when you have a great deal and share the deal in the subject line. Below is an excellent example of both offering value and creating urgency.

To find out more about email marketing read our blogs on the importance of email marketing and email marketing automation.

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