Email Marketing 101: The Subject Line Matters

After reading the title of this post you might be thinking, “it’s 2021, do people really use email anymore?”. And the answer is heck yes, they do!

And the stats back this up. A study by Statista predicted that in 2022, over 347 billion emails will be sent daily. Not only that, but by 2023, 4.3 billion people will have and use an email address. That’s a lot of people that might be interested in your product or service that you could be potentially losing out on! (For more reasons why you should use email in your marketing strategy, click here.)

The average open rate for an email campaign varies depending on what industry you’re in and (finally to the point) the title in your subject line. Think of the email title like the back of a book. If the synopsis doesn’t catch your attention, you’re not going to keep reading.

If you don’t catch the interest of your target audience when they open their email in the morning with a good title, then it doesn’t matter how many people are on your email list. You’re just not going to see the results that you want.

So, how do you write a title that successfully captures the audience’s attention in only a few words? Keep reading to see!

Keep It Personal

Nobody wants to feel like just a fish in the pond. People want to feel connected and seen. And that doesn’t change no matter how people communicate. If you send the same exact subject line to everyone in your audience, then you aren’t making that personal connection.

You can keep the title (and its content) more personal to individuals by breaking your audience down using email segmentation. This creates multiple smaller email lists within your overall contact list and helps you know what message is correct for which audience. (This applies to everything when it comes to email marketing, by the way).

Make It Short and Sweet

Make sure you only use one to six words in your subject line title. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience.

All the relevant information will be in the email itself. The whole point of the title is to entice them to open and read the email using only a few words!

And on that note…

Put the Most Relevant Info First

Since your subject line title won’t be wordy, make sure that you put the most important information first. Even if it’s only one word, make it the most important and relevant word!

Entice Them to Act

Think of your subject line title like a tiny infomercial: “Buy right now and save!” “Call the number on the screen to get your bonus pan!”.

Use a call to action to entice your audience to open the email and peek at what you’re offering them! A great way to do this is by using a question for your email title so that they know the answer is right there in the email (no Google necessary here!).

Don’t “Do the Most”

You might think that to gain your audience’s attention, you need to have fifteen exclamation points, all caps, a question, and a couple of emojis.

This would be you “doing the most” to get the least back. When people see too much extra in a subject line title to an email, they immediately think spam and click delete!

Keep the extra bits to a minimum and you’ll see a better open rate.

With these tips, you can increase your email open rate and get the attention of the people who would benefit the most from your service/product. And remember, the most important thing when it comes to writing of any kind is to be creative!

To learn how to increase your audience (cause you need an audience before the email even exists) check out our blog post all about how to build your email subscriber list!