Your Subject Line Has Only One Purpose In Email Marketing
When it comes to your email marketing, what is the only purpose of your subject line?
The first thing to say is that the importance of subject lines is pretty overrated.
Let me explain why:
If your best friend emailed you, would you open it on the merit of the subject line, or would you open it because of your relationship with that person?
It’s the latter, right?
Relationship will always trump some snazzy marketing tactic; so if you’ve got a relationship with your database, then you don’t need to worry too much about subject lines…
That being said, there’s still some ‘best practice’ for creating a compelling subject line, and here’s my main pointers on this subject:
- Think of the subject line as the advert for your email. The only goal of the subject line is to get the person to open the email, so it’s smart to create something that’s compelling and makes your prospect want to read it.
- Don’t give away the farm. The number one mistake I see people making with subject lines is giving away what’s in the email. By using the subject to tell everyone what’s in the email, you’re making it easy for your prospect to decide not to open it on the basis that they already know what the message is.
- Don’t ever put the words ‘newsletter’ or ’email news’ in it (it simply tells your prospect that they are being sold to).
I see the same mistake as in point one above made across business websites too. The only purpose of your website is to sell the first contact with you, whether that be by the downloading of a free guide, calling you or filling in your free enquiry form. It is not to sell your entire service; very little in the way of services are sold from websites but instead from the follow up emails and telephone calls.
When it comes to writing email subject lines, nine times out of ten I write my subject line after I have written my email. I just find it works better that way for me.
If you are sending emails, how do you write your subject lines?
If you aren’t yet, shouldn’t you be?
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