The subject line often gets the short end of the stick when it comes to time investment. It’s easy to focus on creating awesome email content, crafting a message and a powerful call to action, and leave the subject line as an afterthought.
First impressions matter, though, and the subject line is your introduction to your contacts. It’s your chance to grab their attention and make them need to see what’s in your email. In other words, it’s something you should really be investing as much time in as your body content.
After all, if nobody opens your emails in the first place, the best content ever written will flop.
Keep It Simple
It’s sadly not hard to overdo your subject line. You want people to know exactly what value they’re getting, so you don’t want to be too vague. Cramming a bunch of relevant details into a subject line is a double-edged sword, though.
Your subject’s goal is to stand out from the inbox clutter. In order to do that, it needs to be punchy and to-the-point. Open rates tend to go up for shorter subject lines – try and keep it as close to 30 characters as you can.
This also means your subject lines are much less likely to get truncated in inboxes. If you write a long subject, but half of it is cut off in the contact’s inbox, you’re just shooting your open rate in the foot without actually providing half the details you wanted to.
Pique Their Interest
Crafting a catchy subject line is a balancing act. You’re basically trying to condense your entire email message into a handful of words, to keep it as short as possible while conveying as much valuable information as possible.
In order to do that effectively, it’s critical that you know your audience. Who are you sending to? What moves them and motivates them? If your subject line is something that vaguely seems relevant or interesting, but doesn’t grab their attention, it’s not going to stand out.
The best subject lines are the ones that cut straight to something the contact really values. In the B2B world, that’s typically what motivates them at work. Does your product solve an issue you know your contacts are probably facing? Address that issue in your subject line by communicating that they’ll no longer need to worry about that problem.
The how and why of it should come into play more in your email body (but don’t go overboard!). The goal is always to promote the value to the reader, not what your product rocks at. Once someone is convinced that a) they have this problem they need solved, and b) there’s probably a solution in this email, you’re much more likely to get the open.
Personalization is Key
Personalization tokens are standard these days. The bare minimum information you need is someone’s name and email address. The company they work for is also a useful tidbit if you can collect that.
An email that addresses someone by name, shows familiarity with the contact’s pain points and industry, and provides a compelling solution (or a path to one) is much more convincing than a blast full of salesy “why our product rocks” content. And they’re easy to use – any email platform worth its salt will have personalization options.
Hit Inboxes, Scale Up
All those awesome subject lines don’t do you any favors at all if they don’t get seen. When your campaigns land in junk folders, odds are good that your catchy subject line and killer email content won’t get any eyes on them at all.
Clearly you don’t want this to happen. Understanding what impacts inbox rate (and how you can ensure your campaigns don’t get banished to the junk folder) can go a long way to bumping your email results.
