The success or failure of your email marketing campaign can often be determined by two little words - subject line. Most of the time, people decide to open or trash the email solely based on what the subject line says or how long it is. Understanding Marketing is here to help take some pressure off by giving you some guidance on how to write the best possible email subject line so that you can have greater success in your email campaign management.

Here’s a great resource to help with your email marketing: The Complete Guide to E-mail Marketing

Here are a few things to keep in mind when thinking of your email subject line.

1. The most important measurement for any email campaign is the open rate. So monitor what has been working and what hasn’t as you build new emails.
2. Don’t trick people in your email just for the purpose of opening your email. You don’t want to mess around with trust when it comes to your customers.
3. Look at previous emails and take note of what kind of information your customers respond to. Build future emails and load them up with the information that people want from you.
4. Use your subject line to entice people and create interest. Avoid using the subject line as your call to action with phrases like “place your order here.”
5. Always think like the customer and answer the question, “what’s in it for me,” with the subject line.
6. Avoid spam keywords in your subject line, including words like free, password, mortgage, sex.

There are different types of email subject lines that you can leverage for email success. Here is an overview of these different types:

Limited Time Only: creates a sense of urgency among your customers and highly encourages them to open so that they don’t miss out on a good deal.

Name Recognition: here you personalize each email subject line by using the name of the email recipient or their company.

Thought Provoking: in this subject line you ask a question to get the reader’s interest and then use the copy to answer the question and get them excited about the information offered.

Features: this subject line is heavy in features and benefits so the reader can see why it’s important for them to open the email.

Facts & Figures: by using facts, figures and stats you immediately establish a level of scientific credibility to leverage a high sense of trust with whatever information you’re about to deliver.

Try to employ some of this knowledge in the next email you develop for a special promotion or new product. Leave a comment here and share with us what kind of elements you like to use in your email subject lines.