Even if you’ve become an expert in social media and all types of digital marketing strategies, there’s a good chance that you’ll continue to use email to market to your customers directly. Email marketing is an extremely useful tool, and will probably continue to be so for many years to come. With email, you can easily tailor your content for specific audiences, separate your marketing list into groups, and then track your results.
The only real trouble with email marketing is getting your customers to open the email, which unfortunately isn’t always easy! Most people receive dozens of emails a day, so yours has to stand out. The best way to do this is with a catchy subject line. So how do you ensure your subject line gets noticed?
1. Use Numbers Where Possible
Listicles are popular because they provide a good structure that’s easy to absorb. Rather than a huge block of text, a listed article allows readers to skim the headings in order to find the sections they’re most interested in, and also gives them an indication of how long it will take to read.
For example, if you were to receive an email with the heading ‘5 Exciting New Fintech Products’, you’ll know that the content can be read relatively quickly. There are only five products listed, so you won’t have to scroll through a ton of information to get to the products that appeal to you. You can easily check out the name of each product in the subsections, and decide if you want to read about it.
Essentially, people are drawn to quick and easy reads, that they can skim if they want to. So including a number in your email subject line should lead to higher open rates.
2. Try to Personalise Your Subject Line
It’s incredibly easy to just use a generic subject line and hope for the best, especially when you have a huge list of customers. But you need to show your customer base that you know what their interests are, and what information they’ll find useful.
This is where it’s important to separate your customers into groups. Try and find out what sort of products they’re interested in, and then tailor your content to that. Goodreads are a great example of a company doing this well – they ask their members to tick which genres of book they enjoy reading, and then send out separate newsletters for each genre.
Of course you can also personalise the subject line of an email by simply including the recipient’s name. This does tend to get better results in general, but you’ll probably see a much higher click rate if you go the extra mile and incorporate other personalisation techniques like using interests or location.
3. Consider Emojis
Obviously emojis aren’t the right tool for everyone. Some businesses will be marketing to older audiences, who may not appreciate the use of emojis. And if your product is something a little more sensitive, emojis might not be appropriate.
But for most brands, including emojis in their subject lines is seeing positive results. Emojis are colourful and often eye-catching, so should be able to increase your open rate. Just remember to avoid too many exclamation points alongside your emojis – an abundance of exclamation marks often triggers spam filters, so your message won’t be seen.
4. Short and Simple
If your subject line is too long, it could get cut off halfway through by the email service provider. There is no definitive number of characters you should use, as different devices will show different amounts of text, but the general rule is to keep your subject line within around 40 characters. That way, even if the email is seen on a mobile device, where space is more limited, the whole message should appear.
If you keep to these four simple rules, you should see a much higher click rate for your emails moving forward. We wish you the best of luck!