Email Marketing Archives -

How to Write a Good Subject Line

Posted on February 2, 2018 by

From car insurance companies offering their latest deals, to travel agents tempting you with your next holiday destination, or your favourite retailers offering discounts, you probably receive hundreds of marketing emails every week from companies that have your details. Perhaps you purchased something recently from their site, or signed up to their mailing list to get 15% off your latest purchase. Either way, once a company has your details, the chances are you’ll receive a lot of marketing emails from them!

But do you actually read these emails? Do you even open any of them?

Companies and marketers often test different methods and techniques that would (ideally) result in high open and click-through rates of their email campaigns. However, it’s often really hard to get the recipient’s attention due to a high volume of emails received every day.

According to CMB Consumer Pulse research, 47% people open the email based on a subject line. As the subject line is the first thing recipient sees it plays a huge role in whether your email will be opened or not; therefore, it’s important to take a moment to think of something relevant, clever or witty that will catch the recipient’s attention!

Click a button below to download our free ‘Subject Line’ guide!

The guide includes a checklist, examples of the best subject lines and subject line keywords that are proven to increase email open rates.

download here

How to write a good subject line

Personalise your subject line

Use a recipient’s name in a subject line. Not only will it make them feel special, it will also make them feel they are a valued customer – resulting in a higher open-rate of your campaign. According to Experian Marketing Services research, email subject lines that contained a recipient’s name had 29% higher unique open rate and 41% higher click-through rate than the ones with no personalisation used.

However, before you decide to use a contact’s first name in a subject line, make sure all of your contacts contain a first name, as it’s often the case that your database is missing this information. Some of your data might only contain customers’ surnames or some having only initials, and you don’t want to send an email with a subject line saying ‘Happy Birthday F’. Use a marketing automation tool to help you with segmenting this data.

💡 If you are not very keen on using your contacts’ names in the subject lines, try using ‘you’ instead. This is another great way to make your recipients feel that the email is especially for them.

Keep it relevant

If you are selling an exciting product, the chances are you want your subject line to be exciting too. But if you sell a product that is not so exciting, you still want to create an air of excitement in subject line, simply because it makes people curious about what’s inside your email.

But don’t make any fake promises just to get people to open your emails. This can be very annoying, and all it will lead to is people scrolling down your email for one reason only – to hit unsubscribe.

Use a familiar sender name

People want to communicate with real people and feel valued as customers. Sending an email from a familiar sender name makes the email appear more personal and friendly to the recipient. It can also reinforce a sense of exclusivity, as though the offer inside is personal and just for them. Generally speaking, most people would prefer to see an email from the actual person than the one from noreply@yourcompanyname.co.uk.

Make it look urgent

Subject lines such as ‘50% off TODAY only!’ create a perception in the recipient’s mind that they must act now otherwise they miss out. Email subject lines that suggest a sense of urgency can help marketers increase their open-rates – when executed properly. It’s important not to overuse this type of subject line, as if you make every email urgent, it will lose its value. Customers like to benefit from offers, but they also don’t like to be told what to do and when to do it. We would advise using these kinds of subject lines only when the content of your email is genuinely urgent or time restricted.

Make them feel special

Customers love to be made to feel special. If they receive an email saying ‘an exclusive offer for you’, it will make them want to open the email to see what’s inside for them, even though it was probably sent to another 4000 people.

Offers

Who doesn’t love discounts and offers?! Especially offers on products and services we regularly buy or use!

Whether you are a bakery shop, a fashion retailer, a digital agency or any kind of business, treat your customers from time to time and offer them a discount. Make the offer known in the subject line so your customers don’t miss out on the offer!

Use visuals

If you’re sending an email to your colleague, you’ll probably send a simple plain text email. But when you send newsletters, promotional emails, thank you emails, etc. to your customer, there’s no reason for you to be held back. Get creative – use images or gifs to make reading your emails much more entertaining.

💡 Your customers will be opening emails on different devices (e.g. mobile phones or tablets). Make sure your images are responsive so there won’t be an issue opening it on any device.
💡 Using gifs is great, but use sparingly and think carefully about your audience – a gif that’s funny in the office might not be funny to a customer!

Use A/B testing

Crafting a standard subject line is easy. But coming up with the one that recipients will click on might be a bit harder. How do you find out what will work well with your customers?

A/B test is the answer.

You might think that the subject line you came up with is great, but your audience might not agree. This could result in a low open rate of your emails. Try using an A/B test, which is easy to implement and brings effective results. Send email A to half of your customers and email B to another one. This will then show you what approach to choose so you can meet your audience’s preferences.

Whatever type of email you send out, think about the subject line carefully. It might be a major element in whether your email marketing campaign will be successful or not.


What Makes A Good Email Marketing Campaign?

Posted on January 29, 2018 by

Many businesses use email marketing to communicate with new and existing customers. When done right, it’s one of the most effective ways to tell people about the products or services you offer and to increase your sales. Email marketing also allows businesses to focus on targeting specific customers or groups of customers directly and in a more personal manner.

Businesses benefit from using automation tools that help organise their email marketing campaigns. There are many automation tools to choose from. We use Hatchbuck, which is a CRM, marketing software and email marketing system all-in-one. It’s easy to use and helps you to stay on top of your marketing and communications strategy. You can allocate various tags to contacts that will help you differentiate your customers. Filtering contacts by their preferences or location can help you target right people with the right emails. This way you don’t have to worry about accidentally sending a ‘Congratulations on your baby arrival’ email to someone who wasn’t expecting one!

Steps to a successful email marketing campaign

First things first

Gather your contacts. You probably have a list of contacts in your database if you’re thinking about starting an email marketing campaign, however, you want to make sure this list constantly grows.

  • Get people to subscribe to your newsletter, clearly place the subscription form on your website or in a blog post. Make it as visible as possible so it can’t escape their attention.
  • Offer people some free goodies. These could be free samples of your products or a free e-book they could benefit from.
  • Collect email addresses at networking events. Make sure you send a welcome email afterwards.

There are many different ways you can grow your contact list, but also, bear in mind that your contact list is mainly about quality and not the quantity. Make sure you go through the contacts after each of your campaigns as there will be hundreds of emails which were either not delivered due to a wrong email address, or people in your database simply don’t work for the company you’re trying to reach. Keep an eye on this as there’s no point in sending emails that will never be opened.

Subject line

The subject line is the first thing we see when we receive an email. Therefore it plays a big role in determining whether or not your email is worth opening and reading. Think about creating a subject line that will make your recipient curious about what’s inside your email. Use creativity and relevance.

Personalisation

People like to see they are valued customers. Using their first name in a subject line or at the beginning of the email makes them feel that you value them and they are important to you. Using email marketing software helps you with sending a high amount of personalised emails to your contacts based on their buying decisions and preferences.

E-shot design

The design of an email is very important as it represents your brand and forms an impression in the mind of the recipient. Create an email template that you will use for your email marketing campaigns. This can be tailored for each of your campaigns, however, take into account brand personality and maintain consistency. Logo, colour scheme, font, size, and style should be in line with your current brand guidelines and remain the same for each of your campaigns. While working on your design you have to make sure the design is responsive so your customers won’t have any trouble opening it on any device.

Avoid spelling mistakes

Spelling mistakes can make your business look unprofessional and put potential off reading your email. Make sure you double check your emails before you send them out and make sure you get their name spelled correctly. The last thing your customers want to pick up on is a spelling mistake!

Relevant content

When your customers open your email, they will be expecting to find information that is relevant to them. If your content is too generic and the information or offer you provide has nothing to do with them, they are likely to hit unsubscribe. Stop and think – is this email useful and relevant to this customer?

Mobile optimisation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we mentioned earlier, make sure your email is responsively designed. People spend a lot of time on their mobile phones, so it’s no surprise that emails are most likely to be opened on mobile devices. According to Litmus report from December 2017 (based on 1.23 billion opens), Apple iPhone holding 28% becomes number 1 platform for opening emails. This means it’s crucial that your emails are adapted for mobile use as well as for a desktop use.

A/B test

Running an A/B test is one of the easiest and most reliable ways of finding out which campaigns work best for your audience. Try using a different subject line, or experiment with a different format and design of your email. Send an ‘A’ email to half of the customers in your contact list, and the email ‘B’ to another half. This will then help you to find out what works best for your target audience.

Test it – again and again!

Before you launch your email campaign, be sure to test it first, and then test it again. Test your campaign across multiple platforms and devices and check that it displays correctly. Run a spam check too – this will check whether your email will pass through spam filters or not, which is pretty crucial.

Measure your results

Each email marketing campaign will provide results. It’s important to measure your open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes and complaints. Email marketing software gives you full reports on these results, helping you to analyse which campaigns work well and which don’t.

Follow up

Once the contact shows interest, it’s important to follow up. For example, if your email contains a link to your website which your contacts clicked on, follow up with another email based on the interest showed. This will help you to build new relationships with prospects and maintain good relationships with your existing customers. Keep the process of following up those who show an interest steady, however, remember not to make it overwhelming. You don’t want to put potential customers off by annoying them!

Web-Feet can help you with E-shot generation, email template design and planning your email marketing campaigns so don’t hesitate to contact us today.


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