Boost Your Email Success With the Right Words

Despite the onslaught of video, social media marketing and search engine optimisation, you shouldn’t ignore the impact that a good email marketing campaign can have on your business.

A recent report by Salesforce.com showed that:

• 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email
• 72% of B2B buyers share useful content via email
• 82% of consumers open emails from companies
• 33% of recipients open emails based on the subject line alone
• 64% open an email because of the subject line

Those last 2 suggest the subject line you use is critical for the success of your campaign. Hardly ground breaking stuff, but how much time do you give to your subject line creation?

The importance of the email subject line

Adestra has just released its annual subject line analysis report that shows usability and clarity is the key to getting good email open and click rates. So forget the cryptic teaser subject lines, people don’t have the time or energy to try and work out what you’re talking about. If you’re having a sale, tell people; if you’re launching a new video, tell them; if you’re announcing a news item, guess what? Tell them.

The report shows that using the word ‘free’ in your subject line will decrease open and click rates, but using ‘free delivery’ had the opposite effect.

So what other keywords work? Well, how about:

• Sale
• New
• Alert
• News
• Video
• Win
• Daily
• Weekly

Those that didn’t perform so well were:

• Only
• Learn
• Report
• Today
• Webinar
• Get
• Register
• Don’t miss
• Re:
• Fw:

Even if you spent hours putting your email’s content together, a hasty subject line could undo all your hard work.

Your subject line is the key to getting your emails read, so it makes sense to spend time over them.

Have a read of Adestra’s report to see what nuggets you can glean that will give your email marketing the shot in the arm it needs.

Author: Sally Ormond, Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd. Follow her on Twitter and Google+

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos