Email subject lines are our first (and sometimes only) chance to make a good impression on our subscribers, so making them interesting and compelling is essential to your email marketing success.
If you miss your chance to capture and hold their attention, your subscribers are less likely to open your emails, read your content, and click on your call-to-action links.
Today we’re going to cover the elements of captivating subject lines and how to discover which types of subject lines work best for your specific audience.
Let’s get started.
General guidelines for effective email subject lines
Writing subject lines that inspire people to open and read your emails is both an art and a science.
To get your subscribers to open, read, and click on the links in your email messages, thoughtfully craft the subject line of every message you send.
Your subject line is like the headline of a piece of online content — you get one shot to encourage your recipient to keep reading.
If you’re just getting started (or you’re not sure where to begin), here are some guiding principles for crafting compelling subject lines.
Your email subject lines should:
Provide a succinct summary. Forty characters or five-to-ten words is standard.
Create a sense of urgency. Why should your reader open your email now?
Match your content. Don’t misrepresent the content of your email — it annoys your subscribers and could increase your unsubscribe rate.
Arouse curiosity in your readers. What will inspire them to open your email and check
Category: Split-Testing
Split-Testing 101: How to Know Which Words Work
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~ Mark Twain
That Twain guy was pretty smart. But he had to rely on the intuition that comes from years of writing to choose the right word, and even then it was still a guess. Poor guy.
Nowadays, we’ve got technology that allows us to easily know what the right word, phrase, or headline is, at least when it comes to getting people to take the action you want. But all the tech in the world won’t help you if you don’t know what to test, or test incorrectly.
To make sure that doesn’t happen to you, I invited Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers to give us free consulting share her wisdom at the intersection of creative copy and no-nonsense testing.
In this 35-minute episode Joanna and I discuss:
Her approach to email opt-in button copy
What every real copywriter should focus on
The starting point for building any “new” audience
Why what you want to write doesn’t matter
The number of conversions you need to make a good call
The type of language you should split-test
How to know what site areas to test in the first place
The recurring theme of conversion testing that works
Click Here to Listen to Rainmaker.FM Episode No. 27
Or, grab it in iTunes.
About the authorBrian ClarkBrian Clark is founder and CEO of Copyblogger, host of Rainmaker.FM, and evangelist for the Rainmaker Platform. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
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