Subject Line Tricks To Improve Open Rates
When it comes to improving open rates, there are several aspects that are key. One of those is the subject line that the audience sees. If you have a boring subject line, then your mail can be lost in busy inboxes. However, if you make slight tweaks to your mail, then you can make it stand out and improve your campaign’s performance.
So, what are the subject line tricks you can use to improve open rates?
1. Bracketing Text
One of the newest ways that people have started to build upon their open rate is by including brackets in their subject lines. A line like this:
Some amazing daily deals that can’t be found elsewhere
can be turned into
Some amazing (exclusive) daily deals
The brackets used to be unusual. So it drew attention to the email in an inbox. However, more marketers are starting to do this, so consumers are going to get used to the practice soon. That doesn’t make it less valuable, there are still going to be some audiences who are more likely to click through on this type of subject line.
2. Avoid Blacklists (Spam) Words
Another key aspect to getting your emails opened is getting them seen in the first place. When you include spam words in your subject lines then mail servers are going to be blocking your content, making them bounce, or sending them to the spam folder, where few people check for emails.
There are a lot of words that can be considered bad for spam. So be sure to check out those lists carefully. We’ve even created an article recently where we detailed some of the worst options for words.
However, two good examples would be the words ‘daily’ and ‘deals’. These are often associated with spam and so should be removed and replaced. So this subject line:
Some amazing (exclusive) daily deals
could be turned into
Some amazing (exclusive) products available today.
3. Add Ownership To The Subject Line
Call-to-action optimisation is all about giving ownership of the action to the reader. The same can be said to email subject lines. After all, they are both there to tell the audience to do something. In the case of the email subject line, it is to read the rest of the content.
There are several ways to add ownership to a subject line. But the most powerful is by including the word ‘you’ somewhere in the text. While personalisation used to work, customers are becoming more aware of the technology that can just add it in. So placing a name within the subject line is becoming less effective.
Therefore, this subject line:
Some amazing (exclusive) products available today.
Could become
Some amazing (exclusive) products available for you today
4. Be Controversial And Keep A Secret (Very Badly)
Another key tactic used by numerous other people on email marketing is being controversial and implying a secret. This adds intrigue and a desire by the audience to know what is hidden within the email. Controversial aspects are hard to apply without offending certain elements, but there are ways of doing it.
You don’t have to use the word secret, or confidential within the content to get the secret element across. Instead, you can use words like ‘exclusive’ or ‘just for you’ to get that same sense. For instance, in the example above, we’ve used the word exclusive. That implies scarcity and secrecy. Therefore, audiences are more likely to click through.
To add controversy, you could add something like:
Some amazing (exclusive) products available for you (that your [name of relation] doesn’t want you to have)
The name of relation can be swapped with any relation like wife, husband, mum, dad, etc..
Conclusion
Improve your email marketing success with some of the tips above. When they see your new subject lines, you should see an increase in the number of people who are reading your content and therefore making a purchase.
How do you monitor your open rates? Have you tried split testing to see what subject lines perform better?
Let us know in the comments below.
Tagged in: email content, open rates, Subject Lines