Choosing The Subject Line Of Your Email
Over 50% of people will open your email based on the subject line alone.
Personalisation
Many marketers just ask for the email address only on the opt-in form because they think that asking for the name will reduce the opt-in rate slightly. This is true, it will reduce the opt-in rate slightly but there are at least 2 benefits of asking for a name.
The first is that it can help get the email through the spam filters, companies like Gmail will be more likely to pass an email through a spam filter if they think the email is from a friend to a friend.
Secondly, the extra response you will get from readers, especially with special offer emails will greatly outweigh the few that you lost by asking for their name.
However, I would keep n eye on the names people use to sign up with. You don’t want to address them as “Hi Asshole” or similar even if that is the name they used to sign up. Just change any dodgy names to a blank space.
Personalisation can encourage the reader to open the email, people will see their name and will read the email because it is specifically addressed to them. Other Personalisation you can use are mentioning one of their interests but make sure the personalisation is relevant and accurate.
For instance:
Are you still interested in XYZ?
Mobile Friendly emails are more important than ever with more than 50% off all emails being opened on smartphones without including tablets. All emails should be mobile optimised to ensure maximum open rates.
An Apple iPhone cuts of subject lines after 35 characters so make sure the first 40 characters are relevant. The iPhone also allows up to 140 characters in the Preheader.
If your email is written for an iPhone it should be suitable for all smartphones and tablets as well as desktops. You don’t need a new all singing, all dancing, new ipad, an older version with Wi-Fi will be fine for testing emails and is also useful for checking websites as well.
Numbers can have good open rates in subject lines. Be specific, use numbers and questions in your subject lines:
The Top 7 Reasons To Check This Out
Are You Making These 3 Mistakes?
4 Proven Ideas To Help You Succeed
The emails sent should be relevant to the subscriber that is receiving it. Use segmentation and tags to segregate your list to send emails to relevant buyers. You can tag people with whatever tags you think are appropriate.
For instance if someone buys your say, coaching course, tag them with “coaching buyer” so that when you send the coaching course campaign again you can choose not to send the campaign to your coaching course buyers because they have already purchased it.
Use scarcity in your subject line. Don’t say “All baseball bats are on sale today” say something specific like “Only 9 Diamond Baseball Bats Left At 50% Off. Scarcity sells.
Use commands like, “Stop Wasting Money On Bright Shiny Objects”.
Here are some suggested types of email subjects:
Funny
Catchy
Welcome
Thank You
Follow Up
Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)
Curiosity
Proof
Benefit
The Email Hook
The average open rate for a good email writer is 15%. Most emails get 1 to 3% open rates if you are lucky. With the information you are learning in this eBook, you should be able to get a 20 to 30% open rate or even more.
Emails should be short and simple. Questions get emails opened. The questions should be open loop questions. People don’t like open loop questions, they like to have the loop closed so they are satisfied they know all they need to know so they don’t have to open and read the email.Typical open loop questions are:
Want To xx?
You will never believe this…
Use an Ellipsis … to create an open loop.
Use an Email teaser to the next Email.
Coming Soon…
Ending soon…
Watch out for this…
Best subject lines use one or more of the following:
Ask A Question
Create Curiosity
Cause Controversy
State a benefit
Give proof
A 5 to 8 email sequence will work best for a simple email campaign.Discount emails, 20% off today, followed by
profit pushers, (general offer emails) can work very well but the discount offer and the profit pusher email should be related or complementary to each other in some way.
Avoid words like “join”, “sign up”, “subscribe”, “affiliate”, “referral”. The first two scream scam. The second to scream pyramid selling.
Finally, subject lines should not be written in all capitals because they are hard to read and it is also seen as the digital equivalent to SHOUTING.
You now know everything you need to write killer subject lines.
