One of the most important aspects to executing a marketing campaign is the ability to reach customers through email. After all, everyone’s got an email account these days, and if you’re sending someone an email, chances are that person opted into your bulk emailing list at some point. Actually, I take that back – I should say that if you’re running a good campaign, that person opted into your email list. If you’re sending emails to random accounts from either scraping addresses on the web or purchasing email lists, you’re probably breaking the law.
But let’s assume that you’re running a clean campaign and that your recipients all opted into your email list at some point. The worst thing you can do, then, is to have someone throw your emails away when they are received, or (even worse) unsubscribe from your email list or mark you emails as spam. You’ve got a captive audience here that wants to receive useful emails from you. Don’t blow it!
Let’s assume that the content of your email is top-notch and that you’re offering useful materials for your email recipients. The best way to make sure that they see your email is to have a great subject line. Here are six tips:
1. Keep it short – All email clients display subject lines differently. You’ve probably got about 50 characters (including spaces and punctuation) to get your point across.
2. Don’t be cute – Keep it simple, stupid. Say something useful or don’t say it at all. A little humor is nice but don’t let it get in the way of your message.
3. Call to action – Each email needs to entice the reader to do something, like “Don’t miss out on our 40% off sale!” or “Want to complain? Take our survey!”
4. Be trustworthy – Don’t trick people into opening the email by promising something that it doesn’t contain. Readers will be more likely to hit “delete,” or worse, “spam” when they feel misled.
5. Consider the source – This goes along with #5, but sending something from an email blaster program that sends from random email address by default just looks like spam. Send it from either a clear company account or from a personal-seeming account, like yourname@companyXYZ.com.
6. Offer something – Don’t say “Your weekly update” unless you absolutely have to. “This week’s deals – 35% off all menswear” is a much better into because you’ve let the reader know immediately what the email will contain.
The key to writing good subject lines comes down to the classic “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” If you’re worried you’re doing too much, you probably are. Be simple and be useful and you’ll be great.