1. Personalise the Subject Lines
60% of email users report that the subject line is the most important part of the email. Why? Because it’s the only part of the email that users actually have the chance to read. Make sure that your subject lines are interesting, well-written and – most importantly – relevant to the recipient.
Take a look at this example, which comes directly from the inbox of a contact at one of our clients:
- Hello [first name],
- How are you doing? I hope you are well. It’s been a while. Thanks for taking time to read my email. I have an important announcement to make about [the topic of the email].
- I just wanted to make sure you were still interested in my services after so long. The reason why I’m sending this email is to find out more about your needs and see if I can help.
- What would be the best time to call?
This email did not have a compelling subject line. In fact, it was pretty boring – especially when compared to the compelling subject line above. But even with a generic subject line, this email still managed to grab my attention.
However, personalising the subject line and/or template made a world of difference. By doing so, the email below instantly went from a potential lead to a paying customer:
- Hello [first name],
- How are you doing? I hope you are well. It’s been a while. Thanks for taking time to read my email. I have an important announcement to make about [the topic of the email].
- I just wanted to make sure you were still interested in my services after so long. The reason why I’m sending this email is to find out more about your needs and see if I can help.
- What would be the best time to call?
2. Match The Inbox To The Outbox
Have a look at the email below. What do you see? Chances are that your eyes immediately went to the top of the email, where the subject line and opening line are located. In fact, with over 50% of your brain’s activity focused on the first five words in an email, the top of the email is often the first impression that your audience makes of you.
What’s wrong with the below email? Well, if you read the subject line first, you’ll see that it’s completely mismatched to the content that follows. Who do you think you’re talking to? Not your reader, that’s for sure. This is why the subject line is at the top of the email and not at the bottom.
With this in mind, make sure that your subject line is relevant and that it closely matches the content that follows. In the case of the email above, the subject line should have matched the opening line – but it didn’t. This is why the email didn’t convince the reader that the content would benefit them.
In general, always put the most important information at the top of the email. It usually takes only 20% of the time to read an email, but it takes over 80% of the time to figure out what the email is about. Keep this in mind when writing your subject lines.
3. Keep It Short
While longer emails may earn you the odd bit of extra attention, particularly if you have a lot to say, they rarely inspire action. Your email’s opening line should be short and snappy, catching the attention of your audience and compelling them to read the rest of the email.
In the example below, we’ve kept the opening line short and snappy:
- Hello [first name],
- How are you doing? I hope you are well. It’s been a while. Thanks for taking time to read my email. I have an important announcement to make about [the topic of the email].
- I just wanted to make sure you were still interested in my services after so long. The reason why I’m sending this email is to find out more about your needs and see if I can help.
- What would be the best time to call?
Not only did this keep the subject line short, but we’ve also kept the email itself short. It’s rare for someone to read an entire email, particularly if it’s long. So, by keeping the content to a minimum, you’re further increasing the odds that your readers will engage with what you’ve written.
4. Keep It Flexible
You may have a very long opening line that you wrote just to test the email’s subject line. While it might have worked well in theory, in practice it’s poor email etiquette to read an entire email just to check the subject line. When you have a flexible schedule and you want to be able to fit in some digital marketing tasks, it’s essential to keep your emails flexible.
In the example below, we’ve kept the email short and snappy, but we’ve added a couple of extra paragraphs of content at the end. This means that if the recipient opens the email and skims through it quickly, they’ll see something new at the end. But for those who read the whole email, there’ll be no unpleasant surprise at the end. They’ll just continue reading what they started. This makes the email more engaging and interesting.
5. Add Keywords
If you’re new to email marketing, it might be hard to know precisely what keywords to use in your subject line and email content. Before you get started, create a shortlist of words and phrases that you think are relevant to your product or service and enter them into a Google search. This will give you a clear indicator of the words and phrases that Google thinks are most relevant when searching for your product or service.
Using the keywords that you found in your search results, add these terms to your subject line and your email content. Not only will this make it easier for your recipients to find your email (and therefore, increase your open rate) but it’ll also increase the odds that they’ll actually read your email.
In the example below, we’ve used some of the keywords from our search results to add some flair to the subject line and used the rest to populate the body of the email. We also used keywords throughout the email to increase the odds that our audience would engage with what we had to say.
- Hello [first name],
- How are you doing? I hope you are well. It’s been a while. Thanks for taking time to read my email. I have an important announcement to make about [the topic of the email].
- I just wanted to make sure you were still interested in my services after so long. The reason why I’m sending this email is to find out more about your needs and see if I can help.
- What would be the best time to call?
- Keywords: [the keywords we found in our search results]
6. Proofread
Have a quick read through your email one last time before you send it. The chances are you’ll find a typo or a grammatical error. Instead of wasting time and energy sending your email, which – in all likelihood – won’t be read, proofread it beforehand. Have a look at the two examples below. Can you spot the difference?
- Hello [first name],
- How are you doing? I hope you are well. It’s been a while. Thanks for taking time to read my email. I have an important announcement to make about [the topic of the email].
- I just wanted to make sure you were still interested in my services after so long. The reason why I’m sending this email is to find out more about your needs and see if I can help.
- What would be the best time to call?
The first example comes directly from the inbox of a contact at one of our clients, while the second one was sent by a brand that’s been around for a while but had to make some adjustments to better suit the modern world.