Email Marketing – What Does It Take To Get An Open? InfoGraphic

All it takes is a great email subject line.

Email marketing continues to be one of the most powerful and direct online marketing techniques available to any small business owner.  It is your one-on-one connection with current customers and  prospects.  I’ve talked about the importance of email marketing many times in this blog.

Obviously, you want your email campaigns to get read and this is where the subject line comes into play.  Without a solid subject line, there is a very good chance your email will never be read and will wind up in the email trash heap.

Searching for the perfect email subject line that will guarantee a high percentage of opens is a lot like searching for the Holy Grail.  Yet, a lot of people do it.

To add to the confusion, there are tons of conflicting opinions as to what does or doesn’t work.  Should it be short?  Should it be long?  Should it be personalized or not? How about using asterisks or parentheses?

The list of questions is enough to give anyone writer’s block.

What to do?

1. As always, focus on your audience.  If you’re providing them with information that is of interest to them, it will be a lot easier to craft the all important subject line.
2. Don’t try to ‘sell’ your audience through your subject line.  It doesn’t work and it gets old fast.
3. Drop the tricks and go for the straightforward ‘tell’ approach. Tricky subject lines haven’t been proven to work long-term and you risk turning off the people who are most interested in what you have to offer.

The folks at Litmus, an email testing provider, offered the following 6 pointers and put together an infographic that summarizes a lot of tested information concerning the all important email subject line.  Unfortunately, the infographic is not definitive about email subject lines.  But it does provide some good guide posts.  Use them.

Go ahead and test out a few techniques listed in the infographic.  That’s one sure way to determine what type of subject lines will work for you, your audience and your business.

Get to the Open in 6 Steps 

When writing the subject line for your next email, consider the following techniques.

1. Useful and ultra-specific: Make sure it is relevant, valuable, and the message is clear to your subscribers.
2. Identify yourself: Is it crystal clear to your subscribers who your email is from? Mention your most recognizable brand product in your subject line, or prefix your subject lines with a consistent identifier.
3. Be visually different: In order to make your email stand out, you can try to make your subject line stand out visually: Consider using brackets, variations on capitalization, phone numbers, quotes, etc.
4. Use timely topics and urgency: Hit home on a point that is top of mind for your subscribers, such as something in the news or a popular topic. Urgency works for real deadlines, but can be overdone.
5. Call to Action: People respond well when you ask (or tell) them to do something. What do you want your recipients to do?
6. Test it out: Test which subject lines resonate best with your audience, so you can repeat success.

 (Click on the infographic to enlarge)