I recently re-read a the white paper, "Rethinking the Relationship Between Subject Line Length and Email Performance: A New Perspective on Subject Line Design," detailing some of the more important considerations that marketers should be thinking about. Here are four tips you can use to increase your subject line effectiveness.
1) Front-load your subject lines with the most important or relevant information.
Take a look at the messages in your inbox, and you'll soon see, it's a strategy that few marketers embrace. The biggest problem is with ordering information. If you've only got 38 to 47 characters-the average number of characters that show up in the subject line of 57% of all U.S. e-mail recipients' e-mail programs-you need to put the most important information to the left.
Use urgency and relevance as a guide. Is your offer or newsletter time sensitive? Put that up front. Make sure your brand is in the first few words. However, if your company has multiple brands or categories, lead with what's most recognizable and important to your target audience.
2) Keep the subject line as short as possible to deliver the message.
Epsilon's research shows that shorter subject lines have higher click-through and open rates. You're looking to pack the most information you can into the smallest number of words while avoiding words that have a sensationalist slant, such as "free" or "discount." Your messages need to be rooted in your customers' expectations," Mabley said.
3) Test the subject lines.
"At the minimum, you should be performing an A/B test on every message that goes out," he said. "The general rule is you can test 10% of your list in order to figure out which option is a better one." This is how you're going to figure out if your front-loaded data should be the brand name or the actual benefit to the recipient, and it's something that may change on a day-to-day and message-to-message basis, he said.
Your messages should also go through a spam filter or email tester so you know how likely it is that an ISP will consider your message to be spam.
4) Dynamically personalize the subject line.
This is something that's simple to do, and shows that you know who you are e-mailing and what they are looking for. "Whether you use their first or last name or their company's name, it makes it more personal and provides better reception," Mabley said.
Some of these suggestions may be difficult to follow for a variety of reasons, but they are simple and effective enough that they should be headed for every campaign you undertake.
