Writing better email subject lines means getting more emails read and products sold
Email copywriting doesn’t just mean writing great sales copy. Before anyone even gets to your email newsletter or promotion, you need to do a good enough job at getting them to open the email newsletter first.
You could have written an award-winning article on how to cure cancer, and it won’t be read unless you write a headline that gets people to open it.
1. Write your email headline / subject line first.
Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com advocates writing your headline first by saying, “Promises tend to be made before being fulfilled. Writing your content first puts you in the position of having to reverse-engineer your promise. Turn it around the other way and you have the benefit of expressly fulfilling the compelling promise you made with the headline, which ultimately helps to keep your content crisp and well-structured.”
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2. Keep your email subject lines short.
You don’t know what email client a subscriber is using, so try to pack the punch in the beginning of your emails. Like a good headline, a good email subject line is succinct. Some email clients such as AOL and Hotmail truncate the email subject line if it is longer than 45-51 characters. Other email clients permit up to 80+ characters. Generally, shorter email subject lines produce higher open and click-through rates.
3. Don’t trick subscribers into opening your email.
Mystery is a good thing, just make sure not to cross the line of “tricking” your readers into opening an email that has content not aligned with what you’re promising them. The email subject line is not creative if it prompts the recipient to open your email message, but subsequently disappoints, confuses, or worse, alienates the recipient.
There are dozens of email subject line formulas suggested by top copywriters that both increase open-rates and can sell more products. One last tip would be to try asking a question, or adding urgency to your subject line. How-to subject lines, like “How to Get 12 Hours Out of an 8-hour Day” are also proven to have great open rates.
