Email marketing is still the number one tactic that companies use for sales, lead generation, or just staying in touch with their clients. Even though we all send tens, if not hundreds of emails per day, that doesn’t mean that the emails are going to be opened by the recipient. Particularly, when you consider how many emails you receive and just how many you choose to ignore. 

In fact, I don’t know about you, but I get so many emails in my inbox every single day that the mere thought of having to browse through all of them becomes exhausting. And because we don’t have enough hours in one day to do it all, we stop opening those emails that have bad, spammy, and irrelevant subject lines.

Success in email marketing is strongly related to how many recipients open the emails and, of course, to the conversion rates as well.

1. Make it short

It doesn’t have to be extremely short (like three words or something like that), but you should be able to convey what your email is about in 50 characters or less. At first, you may find it difficult to create a good subject line with so few characters, but it is going to be more effective for your email marketing strategies in the long run. Try to remember that you don’t have to communicate everything about your email in your subject line; you just need to entice, communicate, or inspire someone to want to learn more. 

2. Personalize it

You can include the name of the person you’re sending the email to and the company name, and you can even say something that will relate to them or use the pronoun “you” or “you’re,” thus making them open your email. If a person’s inbox is full of mostly spammy, irrelevant emails, then yours will shine bright, and it will catch the recipient’s attention.

3. Be clear and concise

We receive emails from SEO companies whose subject lines are something along the keywords “First page on Google” on a daily basis. This can be a good example of a clear subject line – it tells you exactly what you’re going to be reading about in the email. If you’re too subtle, then the recipient won’t even bother opening the email.

4. Be sincere

If you’re sending a newsletter with a selection of articles or just one article that will teach your audience how to increase their website’s traffic, don’t lie to them by claiming it will happen overnight (unless it really does). If you start the statement with a false promise, then people will unsubscribe from your email list.

5. Don’t ever, ever use Caps Lock

For us, Caps Lock screams, “It’s spam, don’t even bother,” and we’re pretty sure we’re not the only ones in this situation. So unless you absolutely need to write the name of a company or use an abbreviation, don’t resort to using Caps Lock.

6. Give them a deadline

If it’s an offer, a giveaway or a downloadable eBook, then using words that give the sense of urgency is a really good tactic to use in the subject line. Instead of postponing opening your email, they will take action right away so that they don’t miss out on a good deal.

7. Improve your email marketing

People look at the subject line of the emails they’re receiving and they make a deduction based on that. And even though your email may contain some great content and valuable information for the recipients, it’s all a waste if they don’t open the email because the subject line is not good enough.