How to increase your email campaign open rates by using killer subject lines

According to a recent study by VentureBeat, email has the highest ROI of any marketing channel available. Standing out with your campaigns is more important than ever as 38% of consumers claim to receive more than 40 marketing emails per week. The subject line is your brands first impression. It’s crucial to get it right. To help you succeed we listed a couple of tips in this blog post.

Categorise you campaigns

For example this might be:

  • Acquisition and subscription emails
  • Welcome emails
  • Sales and promotional campaigns
  • Competitions and giveaways
  • Information and feel good emails
  • Customer retention campaigns
  • Win-back emails

5 key techniques for writing email subjects

Humour

Make your customer laugh. A humorous subject line is a great motivator and works well when the timing is right.

E.g.: ‘Licking your phone never tasted so good”

Emotional

These especial work in celebration periods like Valentine’s or Mother’s Day.

E.g.: ‘A Tribute to mother’s day …’

Personalized

Personalisation means targeting an email campaign to a specific subscriber group. Such emails are more relevant to subscribers and tend to have a high open rate.

E.g.: ‘Chosen for you: 30% off all Eyeliner”

Functional

Functional emails for example are transactional notifications. Make sure to always include order number or product name in the subject line of the email.

Measure Results

Start analysing what role the subject lines play in achieving your ROI goals.

Always take the time to Split test

You might think you know your audience but can you really say what they react best to?

Split testing for subject lines gives you a better in sight of your customers preferences.

Make sure you test what works and what doesn’t.

Segment your list

While email blasts go out to your entire customer base they only might be relevant and helpful for some but won’t be to others and could actually cause confusion.

It is wise to segment you audience by preference and actions they have already taken.