When it comes to email subject lines, the new rule is that shorter is better.
The purpose of sending emails is to get a higher open rate. You’re trying to get a good reply rate, as well. So, that is the context behind this, and I have a couple of tips for you today.
Craft subject lines no longer than five words.
Research shows that subject lines with just one word outperformed the average email by eighty-seven percent.
The shorter the better. The reason being, is if you look at most promotional based emails, they use very long subject lines. When your friends email, you it tends to be a casual, short subject line. So I’ve seen that the shorter your subject lines in marketing, or even when you say things like lower case and more casual, you’ll find that the open rates go up compared to when it’s so professional and the first letter of every word is in uppercase.
I found this example the other day. If you’re reaching out thanks to referral, say so, and your subject line can just say ‘Referred‘, and it says it has a whopping 536% higher reply rate compared to the average email.
So, instead of saying all this extra stuff, personalization, all this extra stuff in your title, just try the word, referred, instead, or justtry the word ‘Hey‘. I’ve seen people send the email, hey, before, and I’ve actually opened it.
Whenthey’re short and to the point, you’re evoking curiosity, and people are like, “What the heck is this?” As opposed to a really long subject line, they’re like, “Oh, this is sales,” or “Oh, I already know what this is, I’m not interested.” Short doesn’t paint the whole picture, so they gotta open to learn.
A few other tactics.
- Make it sound human. The more it can be human, the better,… Personalize 20% of the content in a body to enjoy a 2x higher reply rate.
- Keep emails to no more than 50 words to boost reply rates by over 40%. The more you can make it seem like a human being, the better, because your friends don’t send you super long emails, right?
- Avoid bullets and screenshots/images. They are barriers to getting a reply.
Lastly try send a question based email. Once a month, send out an email with just a question and you should get a ton of responses. The reason being is the more your list engages with you and responds to you, the better your deliverability rates will be, which then directly impacts open rates. You’ll see over time because when Gmail and Outlook and Hotmail see that people are engaging with your emails, they’re more likely to put it in inbox.
NOTE: The average open rates for typical newsletters is around 15% according to Mailchimp.
