AffiliateBOT

Composing the right subject is one of the defining factor in increasing the open-rate of your email campaigns. You may not realize it, but the number of characters you use can positively or negatively impact the success of your campaign. There are small things that we are usually taking for granted but upon closer look actually spell the success of a campaign.

As I always emphasize, information is key to success. And for this topic, I would be referencing to the new white paper released by direct marketing agency Epsilon which had provided an eye opener in many myths and facts about email marketing.

This well-researched white paper, “Rethinking the Relationship Between Subject Line Length and Email Performance: A New Perspective on Subject Line Design,” provides some of the more important considerations that marketers should be thinking about.

I would like to share four tips they came up to improve your 'subject line' performance:

1) Compose your subject lines using key information.

This may be old news to you but go and see your inbox. Do you see email marketers practicing it? Chances are they dont. The important thing to remember is how to arrange the placement of key 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 all the way to the left. Make sure the most recognizable and important branding would be on the first few words. Make good use of words expressing urgency and relevance.

2) Brevity is wealth in terms of subject line.

Epsilon’s research had confirmed that shorter subject lines have higher click-through and open rates. Make sure you pack the most information you can into fewer number of words. The research also warns against sensationalists tone like "FREE" or "SAVE". Most likely you can be labeled as spam on the spot. Also, bad experiences from such subject lines had been on the minds of many readers. Make sure your message is rooted in your customer's expectation.


3) Sending test email.

As time is usually the luxury that we dont all enjoy, sending test email is disregarded. But the research had opened our mind on the value of this practice. It is ideal to test your email by using several templates for subject line. Try to send first to the 10% of your list and see which email has better clickthrough rate. This will help you identify several issues with your email to improve its open-rate. Take notice of the data whether how they are identified by different ISPs - you certainly dont want your emails landing on the spam box most of the time.

4) Dynamically personalize the subject line.

Providing a personal touch to the email certainly gets attention. However, there are guidelines to follow as you dont want to overdo this practice. Make sure that when you place the name, it would be utilized in proper context not just placing them for the sake of personalizing.

Comments (0)

There are no comments at this moment