Email Subject Lines That Get Clicks

Email marketing is one of the most beneficial marketing strategies, as it presents a way to communicate with your audience on a personal level. Email campaigns can achieve a much larger success when generating leads and sales than other marketing strategies. However, what’s the use of an email campaign if your emails don’t get opened?

Exactly! None! There is rather no point of sending emails to your audience if they’re going to ignore and virtually trash them. Therefore, you need to track how many of your emails are being opened. Additionally, try to find out what it is that makes your audience open them. Tracking the analytics of your email campaign will help you determine what you’re doing wrong, and what you’re doing right. With insight into that information, you will be able to improve your email campaign. Consequently, the audience will open more of your emails.

But, what is it that makes your audience not want to open your emails? Well, it’s the first thing that they see when they receive your email, which is the subject line. Therefore, email subject lines are a crucial part of your campaign. Moreover, it determines whether your audience is going to open your emails. If your subject line is bad, there is going to be no interaction between you and your audience, which leads to negative results in the end.

Firstly, in order to get clicks, your email subject line should be focused on the benefits of the reader instead of your own benefits. For example, if you’re marketing an e-book related to video editing, you want your subject line to sound something like “Learn how to edit videos like a professional” instead of something like “Buy my video editing e-book today”.

As you can see, what we did in the first example is we stated the benefits the reader gets from the content of the email. Considering that they have subscribed to your mailing list to receive video related content, they are going to be interested in this subject line. However, if you keep the second subject line, it is likely that people are just going to skip your email because they either don’t feel like spending money at the moment or they feel like your marketing is too pushy. Therefore, stick to subject lines that focus on the benefits of the readers instead of your own.

Make your subject lines sound interesting and engaging, as those are the ones that usually get most clicks. The more your subject line sounds like you are having an ordinary conversation with the reader, the bigger are the chances they are going to open your email. Therefore, sound causal and avoid complicated terminology. Including a personal touch like adding the name of a reader, increases email opening rate by 41.8%. Luckily, most of the email marketing software can automatically include the name of the reader in the subject line, so that you don’t have to send your emails one by one, as that would take forever.

The next tip is to make your email subject lines sound promising. Make a promise to your readers within your subject line to get them interested in opening the email and checking out its content. What’s crucial about this part of making your subject lines clickable is that you must always keep your promises. If you promise the readers they will be receiving some piece of information or an attachment through the email and they find out that it was only click bait, it will significantly ruin the trust between your audience and you. Therefore, always keep your promises and never use clickbait in email subject lines. It may work to get the email opened once but those readers are surely never going to do so again. In the worst case, they may even unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Last but definitely not the least, make your email subject lines optimized for mobile devices. In the last few years, mobile devices have become more popular than PCs and laptops. Most people are checking their mail via smartphones nowadays. That is partial because it is easier to use your phone to check your inbox. Moreover, during the busiest hours, people can spare a few minutes of their break to spend on their phones.

Because 54% of today’s emails are opened on mobile devices, you have to make sure your email structure and the subject line are optimized for such platforms. That means your subject line cannot be too long or otherwise it wont be completely shown on a phone screen. If your subject lines are too long for a mobile screen, it might affect your email opening rate. When people see your email, you have about 4 to 6 seconds to capture their attention with the subject line. A broken subject line won’t do a very good job. Therefore, keep the length of your subject line in mind when creating this part of your email content.

Of course, the success of your email marketing campaign partially depends on the quality of your subject line. Your subject line must look attractive enough to the reader to open your emails. Make sure it is interesting yet informative. Furthermore, it should have an emphasis on the reader’s benefits and not at all your own benefits. Putting the reader’s name in the subject line is going to increase the open rate by 41.8%. Undoubtedly, this is quite a lot. Making promises in your email subject lines is a good thing but unless you can keep that promise, try to avoid doing so. Fake promises and click baits can only end in disasters and they will never benefit to your email marketing campaign. When creating your subject line, keep in mind that it shouldn’t be too long. This is because people will read them on mobile devices as well.

Altogether, for a subject line that gets clicks, make it interesting and inviting. Moreover, it should promise something you can keep.Also,  keep it short! If you follow all these tips accordingly, there is no doubt you will see magnificent results with your mailing campaigns, however, if you need help you can always turn to  www.bethesda-list.com and their amazing services!

David James

President, Bethesda List Center, Inc + Bethesda Emedia Marketing.