Best Practices for Writing Email Subject Lines to Increase Open Rate

The goal of an email marketer is to influence more sales or more interaction between them and the reader. However, this is merely the end result and before reaching the end you must start at the beginning. Before you influence any interest of any sort, you must be able to reach your audience to begin with. When it comes to email marketing, that means getting higher open rates for your emails. That should be the very first goal in terms of reaching the final destination. So then the question is, how do we achieve higher open rates for our emails? For the goal of higher open rates, there are two primary factors to focus on: Sender name and subject lines. We will focus on what we believe to be the higher influence in email open rates: Subject lines!

So how do you write these enticing subject lines that will grant you higher open rates? Here are 3 tactics as stated in the Email Subject Lines Best Practices blog post.

01. Target Pain Points

By targeting stress or pain points, you are catering to something your reader is dying to find a solution for! If your reader feels you will add value to their life in any way, you are in the right path to getting those emails open more often. Remember that your subject line should be catchy and feel like it will add value to your reader. You must always keep in mind that you are writing an email for your reader and not for yourself, so this should be an obvious sign that it should revolve around them and not you! So if you decide to take this road for your subject line, remember to make sure you are reflecting with your reader’s problem, providing a solution and when they open the email, make sure the solution is actually provided.

You do not want to just create some sort of click-bait. If your subject line is only a lie to get your readers to open the email, this will hurt you more than benefit you. Your reader will lose your trust and they may unsubscribe to you right there and then and thus you didn’t solve your problem. All you did was create dishonesty for yourself and lose followers at the same time.

Good examples of targeting pain points are subject lines such as these:

• “The Broke Girl’s Guide to a Luxury Vacation”
• “Idea for Increasing Sales in a Suffering Economy”
• “Sell your home in a Market with No Buyers”

02. Use Humor!

Using Humor is always a good way to catch a reader’s attention. Especially because Email is usually not a place where you expect to find humor. That is usually left for the other social media outlets such as YouTube or Twitter. That is why reading a catchy and funny subject line, is surely to get your reader’s attention and get them to open your emails. The thing about humor is that you can’t really hate it.

Humor is fun and you simply cannot hate fun! People for the most part appreciate when you take something with a serious connotation and find a humorous tone to present it with. If you are capable of finding ways to add humor to your email marketing campaigns, you are destined to get more emails opened. Here are some examples of humor-filled email subject lines:

• “Your butt will look amazing in these workout pants”
• “What you wearing? Bet it ain’t as good as these Jeans!”
• “Show us yours and we’ll show you ours”

03. Using Numbered Lists

Last but not least, using numbers or a top ten list is a sure way to catch a reader’s attention. Remember to make the subject line more like a solution to a problem. You are writing for your reader and not for yourself. Make them want to open your email by offering something they cannot afford to ignore. We already mentioned pain points above but the power of numbers can also do this. You can even make numbered lists targeting pain points! There are certain numbers you can use which just seem comforting especially to those O.C.D individuals. Seeing a “Top 10” or “Best 5” or “3 Ways” are examples of comforting numbers. It doesn’t mean you should stay away from those less frequently used numbers such as 17, 31 or 44 for instance.

Just keep in mind that you want to present your email subject line in a very easy way to understand and in the most appealing manner possible. Your goal in the subject line is always to get the email opened. This is not the place to pitch your product unless you are offering a significant discount to a product and you believe it will be an eye-catcher. As long as it entices interest! Placing an entire pitch on the subject line would be too long and it is actually one of many email marketing mistakes you should avoid. As far as numbers, you are safer using those common ones made for lists such as 3, 5, 10, 25, 50 or 100 to name a few. Great examples of numbered list subject lines include:

• “100% of Marketers should do this yet only 10% do so”
• “5 Sure ways of selling your home in a non-buyer Market”
• “3 Steps to a better Monthly Savings Plan”

Wrapping things up!

Always remember that your first goal as an Email Marketer should be to get your reader to open your email. Without a great Subject line, all your other strategies won’t matter. If you can’t get your reader to open your email, you won’t be able to try strategies to increase click-through rate or strategies to increase sales.

The subject line is the door to your offer and if the door doesn’t seem inviting or intriguing, then your customer will never open that door and come inside. It’s like having a restaurant with great food but yet the front face of the building looks like it is deteriorating and falling apart. Who is going to want to go eat at a place like that? You would simply not trust a place like that to offer your great food. Even if the inside may look great and be very pleasing, your customer will never get to see that without a good store front. Same goes for your Email campaigns. Make sure your subject lines are welcoming and interesting and your customers will come on inside to see what your business is all about!

About the author: Marvin Arciniega is a graduate from California State University of Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing Management. An avid Blogger on Email Marketing and a contributor to helping Small Businesses achieve proper Email Marketing Strategies. Follow him on Twitter here: @EmailSkills1.