“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
-Abraham Lincoln
Every day people are flooded with emails they must decide to open or ignore. Research by Epsilon shows that email open rates are hovering around 25%. Luckily for marketers, there is a way to improve that rate.
Since many people base their decision (about whether to open an email) on the subject line, this means you can optimize it, through testing and iteration, and attain an open rate that is far above average.
In this post, I will share four hacks you can use in your email marketing. Most of these hacks are backed by research, although results vary by industry. (Of course, there is no perfect subject line. The most important thing you can do is experiment and find what converts your mailing list.) These are hacks that I hope you’ll apply in your future email tests:
1. Write Your Email Subject Lines for Mobile Devices
These days many people are accessing their email from their phones. Research from Litmus tells us that almost half of us are viewing email on mobile devices, with the rest either using a desktop program or accessing through webmail. The majority of email clients are Apple devices:
- iPhone —— 26%
- Outlook —– 14%
- iPad ——— 12%
- Gmail ——- 11%
- Apple Mail — 8%
So when crafting your subject line, it’s important to think about how it will appear on all devices.
You may want to just assume that your email subject line will be viewed on a mobile device. Write the whole email for mobile. There are no excuses left if you are not optimizing for mobile.
2. Keep Your Email Subject Lines Short
Research by MailerMailer has found that shorter subject lines have higher open rates and click rates. Work at keeping your subject lines under 50 characters.
Separate research done by Retention Science found that subject lines with 6-10 words had the highest open rate, and subject lines with words in the 0-5 range had the second highest open rate.
The Obama campaign was very effective at raising money through email. A few of their top converting emails began with these subject lines:
Hey
I will be outspent
Some scary numbers
If you believe in what we’re doing…
Last call: Join Michelle and me
Would love to meet you
Change
The most popular Obama
Michelle time
Thankful every day
The one thing the polls got right…
All of these subject lines are under 50 characters and their emails are among those that brought in the most donations. (The “from” address in a few of these emails was “Barack Obama,” which probably also helped improve open rates.)
I’d encourage you to run open rate and click rate tests on different subject line lengths.
3. Personalize Your Email Subject Lines
Personalized emails fall under the umbrella of emails that are unique to the recipients. This can include an email that mentions the user’s name in the subject line or an email triggered by the actions the user performed on your site. Personalized emails cut out broad email blasts and instead are automated and unique to each recipient.
They have been found to be pretty effective, too.
Research by Retention Science found subject lines that included the recipient’s first name had a 16% higher open rate.
More research performed by MailChimp showed that personalizing the first name and last name had the strongest impact on open rates.
Some marketers choose to send personalized emails that aren’t necessarily triggered by any previous actions the user took on the site. A few examples:
Udemy uses my first name, but does not mention any specific classes I may be interested in:
4. Include Multiple Topics in Your Email Subject Lines
Traditionally email subject lines are only one topic. For instance, you probably get lots of emails like this:
Hurry! Sale Ends Tonight at Midnight!
25 Health Tips
Why You Need a New Phone
New Product Feature Announcement
These have only one message. If you’re interested, you’ll open the email. If not, you’ll ignore it. So how can marketers improve the odds of getting their email opened? The best method is to use multiple topics in a single subject line. Here are a few examples:
Big Think gives subscribers two topics they could be interested in: living forever and improving brain function:
LivingSocial mentions four separate product categories in this subject line. I may not be interested in jewelry, makeup, or magazines, but have a curiosity about healthy products. Therefore, I will open the email and see what the “Healthy Products Subscription” offering is all about. I may even go on to purchase the subscription. There wouldn’t be any chance of this happening if LivingSocial used only “Sterling Jewelry”as the subject line.
The Brain Pickings weekly email newsletter lists a couple of topics that can be found in the email:
The advantage of this type of subject line is that they can have a much broader appeal. The marketers are casting a wider net by using multiple topics that will appeal to more people.
Obviously, this method of crafting subject lines conflicts with the 50-character limit discussed above in hack #2. My recommendation is to at least test this method and see if you get a higher open rate.
Some Final Thoughts
There is no such thing as the perfect subject line. As a marketer, you need to test your subject lines and see which ones get the most opens. (Now, clearly, getting people to open your email is only one part. After that you need to get them to click or tap on something in the email.) But you’ve won half the battle if you can get them to open the email.
I hope this blog post has helped give you some ideas for optimizing the most important part of an email.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233624?newsletter=true#
A little about me and my expertise – video
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I go to great heights to sell or purchase your land
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I am a successful Commercial Investment Real Estate Broker in Arizona now for 20 years and I worked with banks and their commercial REO properties for 3 years. I am also a commercial landspecialist in Phoenix and a Landspecialist in Arizona.
WHETHER YOU LEASE OR OWN
NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO EXPAND, UPGRADE OR INVEST.
we are at on the a rise of the cycle in Commercial Real Estate. so there is only one way and it’s called we are going up and now is the time for you to expand, upgrade or invest in Commercial Properties in Phoenix. The prices on deals I may get you will not be around forever.
WAITING TO SELL YOUR LAND ? TIMES CHANGE / IT’S TIME
We barely could give land away the last few years, but times are changing. Even in those meager years, I sold more land across the state than most other brokers. Before the real estate crash I was a land specialist in Arizona with millions of dollars of transactions, but then I had to change and also sell other commercial investment properties, which was fun, but I am a Commercial Landspecialist in Arizonal, a Commercial Land Specialist in Phoenix and love to sell land, one acre to thousands of acres.
If you have any questions about Commercial Investment Properties in Phoenix or Commercial Investment Properties in Arizona, I will gladly sit down with you and share my expertise and my professional opinion in Commercial Properties in Phoenix or Commercial Properties in Arizona with you.Obviously I am also in this to make money, but it could be a win-win situation for all of us.
Please reply by e-mail walterunger@ccim.net or call me on my cell 520-975-5207 or Office:480-948-5554
PLEASE NOTE, I CHANGED BROKERAGES BUT CELL PHONE AND E-MAIL STAY THE SAME.
Thank You
Walter
Walter Unger CCIM
Associate Broker, West USA Commercial Real Estate Advisers
7077 E. Marilyn Road, Bldg 4, Suite 130
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
Cell: 520-975-5207
Office : 480-948-5554
Fax: (480-658-1172
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a little about me and my expertise – video
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