Email marketing helps companies to reach millions of customers every day, with 80% of marketing professionals crediting email marketing with driving customer acquisition and retention.
One study found that the average open rate for marketing emails across all industries is approximately 20.81% - meaning that four out of five emails are never opened.
The target audience decides which emails to open based on the information displayed in the email inbox: the sender, subject line, and any visible preview text.
To make sure that your emails are part of that 20.81% of emails that are opened and read, incorporate these features into your next email subject line:
1. Personalization
Adding specific information, including the recipient’s name or information about recent purchases, can boost email open rates significantly. One study found that personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversions by 10%; and another found that personalized emails have transaction rates that are six times higher than bulk emails.
However, users are becoming conditioned to being addressed by name, so marketers hoping to use personalization to make an impact are using localization – location-specific offers and language, or targeting individuals by a specific interest.
Learn More: Branding and ROI in Marketing: How to See Results
2. Brevity
Email subject lines must be concise and direct for maximum impact. Additionally, as more people use tablets and smartphones to access email, the amount of visible text in an email subject line is becoming shorter.
A typical PC or laptop inbox displays about 60 characters of a subject line; but a mobile phone will show only half of that – 25 to 30 characters on average. This means that a subject line should ideally contain 6 to 8 words.
3. Segmentation
Segmented email campaigns have an open rate 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns, while click-throughs are over 100% higher. Segmentation can be performed based on demographics, industry, geographic location, prior purchases or interests, or other information gained by survey responses or website behaviors.
And don’t forget the value of franchise marketing for national campaigns! Local franchises can supply important information that can be applied to segmentation for email campaigns. Because franchises are close to the local market, they have unique opportunities to gather and maintain customer-specific data, which can then be used for email segmentation and applied to email subject lines.
4. Incentive / Urgency
Creating a sense of urgency, is one way to motivate people to take action. This can be conveyed by using urgent language – words and phrases such as ‘time-sensitive’, ‘hurry’, or ‘limited-time’ all let the reader know that the email should be opened right away.
Finally, don’t forget the preview text. Preview text is what appears next to the subject line when someone is browsing the emails in their inbox. Preview text represents a great opportunity to include supplementary information to elaborate on a brief, impactful subject line. You can either elaborate on the subject line, or give additional information on an incentive or offer.
In the United States, every dollar spent on email marketing is estimated to have a return on investment of $44. Email marketing can be an easy, efficient way to reach a large audience of potential customers. However, only one in five emails are opened by the recipient, and that decision is made based on the information in the email subject line and to a certain extent, the preview text.
Making your email subject lines hyper-personalized and relevant makes readers more likely to open, click, read, convert, and become repeat customers.
CampaignDrive is a platform that helps enterprises and franchises leverage brand power for local impact. Local marketers can customize and personalize pre-approved designs and templates from national headquarters, guaranteeing brand integrity and amplifying value.Create on-brand and on-demand marketing communications in minutes, without additional design support.
To learn more marketing optimization tips, connect with a CampaignDrive Expert for a free demo today.
Sources:
https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Email-Marketing-Double-Win-Customer-Acquisition-Retention/1014239
https://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-marketing-benchmarks/
http://www.aberdeen.com/research/7635/ra-social-media-marketing/content.aspx
https://marketingland.com/study-70-brands-personalizing-emails-missing-higher-transaction-rates-revenue-73241
https://mailchimp.com/resources/research/effects-of-list-segmentation-on-email-marketing-stats/
https://emailmonday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/National-client-email-2015-DMA.pdf
