As Black Friday and the holidays approach, many online businesses are preparing for their biggest sales of the year, and one of the most effective marketing avenues for reaching previous customers is a well crafted email campaign. In this month’s Vortex Marketing Blog, we’ll go over how to craft subject lines that will help your business stand out in your customers’ inboxes!
Subject Line Length
One of the most important aspects of a good subject line is the length. Research has shown that subject lines should be no more than 9 words and 60 characters. The reason for this is that when a customer gets a notification on their phone that they’ve received an email from you, we want the entire subject line to appear right away. On Gmail specifically, one of the most popular email services, about 75% of users access their email from their phones before their desktop computers. As with almost every other marketing avenue, the mobile user experience is the most important!
Keep It Simple
The content of the subject line is just as important as the length. Mailchimp’s research has shown that the fewer punctuation marks and special characters your subject line uses, the more personable it appears. If you use too many of these characters, users and email providers are more likely to assume the email is spam.
For the actual content of the subject line, be short and to the point. Convey exactly what the email is about, and what action you want the recipient to take. Although it might seem more effective to be trendy or clever with your subject lines, research shows the more direct the better!
Test, Testing, Testing!
The last tip is to test as much as possible. Do you have several ideas for a certain subject line? Try them all out! Many email marketing platforms allow A/B testing with their campaigns, meaning that you provide two or more subject lines, and the program will evenly distribute those subject lines to your recipients. Then, once the campaign has been sent, you can see the opening rate, click rate, and other statistics based on which subject line was received. With this data in mind, you can write future subject lines based on the performance.
Most email marketing platforms also allow you to view past campaign history. Collecting data on past performance is a great way to shape future strategies, as you can see what worked, what didn’t work, and where you can possibly improve.
Are you running a Black Friday or holiday campaign this year? Need assistance setting up your email marketing campaigns? Vortex Digital Business Solutions has sent out millions of emails for clients around the world. Visit https://vortexbusinesssolutions.com/ or call 319.621.0191 today.
