Psychology of the email subject line Magic words for email subject lines back to you If you had to choose the most important part of an email, what would it be? Most of us would answer: the subject line of the email ! An email has many essential elements: the call to action, the body of the message, the pre-header text. But nothing is as influential as the subject line of the email. 35% of email recipients will open an email based on the subject line alone, according to the Convince and Convert blog. That's the good news. The bad news? 69% of email recipients will mark an email as spam based on the subject line alone. Ouch. Get your email subject line right and you're pretty sure to have a successful email. But rush it, and you might see an average spike in spam complaints. Psychology of the email subject line It's important to think about a subject line the right way.
It's like a title, but not quite. The difference between a title and an email subject line really depends on how we interact with each. Headlines should grab and hold attention. Email subject lines do this too, but what they really have to do is survive your subscriber selection process. Every day, your subscribers receive a hundred or more email messages. If they are in a busy B2B environment, they may receive several hundred emails per day. Due E-Commerce Photo Editing Service to the rush of information entering our inboxes, we've all had to get really good at deleting what we don't need. Without a compelling, clickable subject line, your email will fail the split-second test your subscribers put it to. It will be deleted immediately. The subject line of your email should hook them enough that they just can't bear to delete it. This must make them want to know a little more. Magic words for email subject lines So how do you craft an email subject line that can survive that first cull? What magic words to apply to charm the hearts of your subscribers? Well, I'm no magician. I don't do hypnosis either.
But I'm a split-testing scientist. So I've found some interesting email subject line split-testing experiences for you, as well as lots of research studies. Maybe they won't act like pixie dust, but consider them the next time you need to add some sparkle to an email subject line. 1) Personalization matters You'll hear about personalization time and time again in email marketing – it's one of the biggest opportunities for email marketers to improve their bottom line. Subject lines are the most likely place to test personalization and get the kinds of results we all want so badly. Marketing analytics firm Retention Science knew personalization would make a difference. So they studied 267 million emails in 543 retail email marketing campaigns. They found that email campaigns with a subscriber's first name had 2.6% more opens than emails without any personalization.