Email Marketing Tip – Write a Great Subject Line

The performance of every email marketing campaign hinges on a wide variety of factors, from technical aspects like the email sending platform, sending IP, or mailer’s sender score to the actual text, design, and graphic content of the email, to the audience segmentation strategies involved. But, one great way to enhance the performance of your next email marketint campaign is to focus on one of the first things that your recipients see when your email reaches their inbox – the email subject line.

For such a simple and comparatively short part of an email campaign, the subject line receives plenty of attention from successful email marketers, to the point that entire books have been written about how to craft the most effective subject line. While you can find any number of different approaches to writing great subject lines, here are just a few strategies to consider

1 – Know your audience. Before you really consider the content of your subject line, consider your audience. You should know them well enough to have a good idea what approaches are most likely to engage with them. Are they offer driven? Do they appreciate humor? Use your understanding of your audience to guide what you write.

2 – Short and sweet or more descriptive? One key note is that even if you decide on a more descriptive approach, you may want to stay under 50 characters. There are numerous studies that suggest the optimal length should stay under this number, partly because email inboxes will cut off subject lines after a certain number of characters. 

3 – Keep it simple. For the most part, you want recipients to understand the point of your email as quickly and easily as possible. A subject line that is focused and leads your audience into the email is likely to perform well. However, simple doesn’t mean boring. You can still grab attention and engage interest in just a few words.

Those are just a few quick things to keep in mind when you write your next email campaign. We’ll tackle this topic in more detail in another Email Marketing Tip post down the road.