Email Subject Line Etiquette for Email Marketing

Effectiveness Of Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is widely used by both small and large businesses worldwide to remain touch with their customers as the cost of sending an email is negligible compared to other communications methods like postal mail or handing out flyers. While some tech companies may handle the email marketing campaign themselves, many firms outsource the email marketing campaign to third party email marketing firms, who manage the design, content of the email and in some cases, also arrange for the mailing list.

The success of any email marketing campaign is measured by the number of people opening the email, number of click-throughs to the website being promoted through the email and/or replies to the email. Most marketing emails are HTML emails, which makes it easy to track the number of email opened.

Number of Opens

Though the number of opens for an email marketing campaign depends on the subject of the email, a surprisingly large percentage (ninety percent) of email marketers surveyed do not bother to pay attention to the effect of the subject of email on the response rate. The response rate will be significantly higher if the email has information on a product or service the recipient is interested in.

Keyword Oriented

The keywords for the success of an email marketing campaign varies from sector to sector. In a survey, for retail and ecommerce, the use of the keywords cheap, free, holidays, win , summer greatly reduces the open and click through rate for the emails. Potential customers believe the product or service being promoted is of low value and poor quality if these keywords are used. On the other hand, studies have indicated that terms like free delivery , sale, half price and available have improved open and click through rates for emails. This indicates that shoppers find the offer of free delivery of items ordered online a major incentive to read the email.

Non-Ecommerce Email Marketing

For non-e-commerce email campaigns using certain keywords like get, register, learn, monthly, report result in a reduction of click through rates for the emails. New, daily, news, video, alert are keywords used by many email marketers to improve the open rate of the email.

Most internet users receive a large number of emails, so they check the email subject line and take a decision whether they wish to spend more time reading the email. Hence it is important to work with a email marketing agency which conducts a thorough subject line analysis before finalizing an email marketing campaign for any product or service.

Try Not to Get Lost

Though emails are cheap, for some people and in some countries, emails often disappear or are diverted to a competitor or rival for no apparent reason. In such cases, it is very difficult to track the diverted email and take legal action for email theft. So one company may spend a large amount on an email marketing campaign, but all the leads generated by the email marketing campaign may be diverted to a business rival or competitor who may be well connected. In this case, the company undertaking the email marketing campaign faces a double blow – money spent on email marketing is wasted, and their business rivals get all the leads for free.