But then I ran across a very similar article on email marketing written by Danny Iny on the AWeber blog entitled: “Can ‘Bad News’ Lift Response Rates?”. Because I clicked on a blog that I’ve never bothered to read before due to a “bad news” title in the very same day, my interest was once again piqued. Given my recent experience, my thinking was, “Why yes, a “bad news” subject line WOULD increase email marketing response rates, and therefore, ROI.”

Typically, “bad news” email subject lines increase response rates initially because they:

• Prompt a question, rather than giving an answer
• Highlight a problem, rather than outlining a solution
• Evoke curiosity

These are three “musts” for a killer subject line that guarantee a high email open rate. While these kind of bad news subject lines do traditionally increase open rates initially, due to a feeling of panic and anxiety: “People read the email because they want to make sure they aren’t going to be negatively affected,” Iny writes, the overall results fall downhill from there. A negative-themed subject line can backfire over the long term because:

Your subscriber might not care about your bad news. If someone you actually know emails you with bad news, your stomach may drop a little bit and you feel your anxiety levels rising with concern. But “bad news” from an email marketer may result in disinterest, suspicion, or worse:

Your subscriber may lose trust in you. Many “bad news” subject lines open to messages that don’t actually contain bad news, and much like the fable of crying wolf, your subscribers might feel manipulated, or worse, deceived. “If your audience ends up feeling like you were employing cheap tactics to get them to buy from you,” says Iny, “then it will likely backfire.”

And a lack of trust means increased unsubscribes, possible spam reporting, and a drop in email deliverability. So if you’re considering implementing a “bad news” subject line email marketing strategy to increase response rates, think carefully and use them sparingly: if an initial boost in open rates ends up costing you subscribers in the end, you’re facing an email subject line strategy that will cost you big time.

Test Those Subject Lines!

In our last post, we talked about the importance of testing your email schedule for deliverability to mobile devices, given the prevalence of mobile devices on bedside tables and the increase in email engagement in the “wee hours” of the morning and weekends. This is a new trend that is only happening due to the surge in popularity of smartphone and email-enabled mobile devices. And once we get started talking about testing for email deliverability, it’s hard for us to stop!

After all, we encourage testing all the time. As a smart email marketer, you should choose something to test every time you create and send an email. It could be anything from your From name to when you send out your emails, to subject line variations. Constant testing falls into the category of email deliverability best practices for several reasons. First, anything you can do to improve your email deliverability rate is a good thing. And testing is the surest way to know how to increase your deliverability rate!  Second, once you’ve gotten into the inbox, anything you can do to improve interaction with your recipient is going to improve your email marketing ROI. And what is your number one way to guarantee increased email open rate? A successful subject line. Your email subject line is equivalent to the headline of a news article. A subject line is a teaser that either provokes interest or removes any possibility of it.

But how do you know if your subject lines are working? Why, testing them of course! And now that we’re focused on testing as an email deliverability best practice, the recent Email Marketing Reports article on subject line testing is very timely!

Three main lessons?

1) In subject lines, there are no absolutes. Even industry standards like “All subject lines should be short” have some caveats.

2) Find out what works best FOR YOU (really: your customers) by a simple A/B test.

3) Make sure you’re measuring what’s important to you. Is it open rate or click-through rate?

For five more lessons with additional detail on how to avoid problems in testing and interpreting, make sure to make it one of your email deliverability best practices to read the full article…today!

Email Subject Line Best Practices: Magic Words that Guarantee An Opened Email

Recently, I came across a blog post entitled “The Four Words That Will Get Your Email Opened” and I couldn’t resist clicking on the link.

Here’s what they said.

“You Are Not Alone.”

Those are the four words that, in a somewhat unscientific yet convincing study, demonstrated an email open rate of 90%. That’s incredible. But let’s think about why this may be.

As anyone with any level of familiarity with psychology knows, one of the biggest fears that humans have, as the social creatures we are, is being alone. And any message that counteracts this fear is one we are hardwired to listen to. And that includes email subject lines.

If the subject line alludes to 1) useful information contained within the body of the email, and 2) the email recipient is not the only one who will benefit from the information, your email open rates (and email deliverability) are bound to soar.

Make sure you reinforce this idea by crafting engaging and useful content in your email. Your alluring subject line may have gotten your email opened, but don’t betray the trust with providing empty statements, boring or useless information, or worse, failing to address what your subject line alludes to. The last thing you want to do as an email marketer is be a tease. Deliver on your promises, and in this case, your subject line is promising good information and engaging content, if only your subscriber will open the email.

What subject line keywords have you noticed generate the most open rates? Have you used the “You are not alone” approach? Leave a comment below and let us know how it’s worked for you, or if you experiment with it in your next email marketing campaign, share your results with us! We’d love to hear from you!

The author’s point was, be careful about these types of headlines because they often lead you to articles that lack substance. The articles are usually just recycled information, he claimed.

What the author failed to mention is: Numbers in titles work. And in headlines and email subject lines too. They work. That’s why we use them.

Perusing a bunch of unopened emails just now, we noticed two—one on top of the other—that both had subject lines starting with 5. One started “5 Ways…” and the other started “5 Must-Have…” imagine looking in your inbox and seeing two bolded subject lines, one on top of the other, both starting with the number 5. Odd, right? Not really. Numbers work.

Writing email subject lines is a tricky business, and an important one. After all, the email subject line is one of two factors recipients consider when deciding whether or not to open your email (the other is the From address). Ironically, in the world of email copywriting, it’s probably the part of most email marketing campaigns that gets the least attention, but arguably has the most impact.

It might seem trite. It might seem overdone and overused. It might seem too easy. But numbers in email subject lines work.

Not to say that author might have been right! It could be that the bulk of articles headlined with numbers are recycled, irrelevant information. But in the email marketing world, numbers work in email subject lines.

But it’s still up to us to make sure our email marketing content is relevant, timely and useful, even if with a killer email subject line.

The “From” line might be.

Email subject lines are researched, debated and tested, but how many email marketers are putting enough thought into whom the email is really “from”? In our never-ceasing quest to be the email marketing vendor who keeps you in the know on all the various ways to improve your email marketing ROI, we’ve put a lot of thought into the From line. Here are three tips to help you do a better job with that critical piece of your next email marketing campaign:

1. Don’t use personal name unless it’s a name the recipient will know. An email from Barack Obama would likely get opened due to name recognition. But not one from Ted Smith.

2. Instead, use your company name like ClickMail Marketing. Or if you have a product or brand name that’s better known than your company name, use that. The point is: Use the name that your recipients will recognize.

3. Note that some email clients show the actual email address in the From line. Just like you shouldn’t use a person’s name if it won’t be recognize, don’t use an email address that won’t be recognized either. Instead of marco@clickmailmarketing.com, make it something that hints at what the email is about like sales@, support@, newsletter@ or greatdeals@.

Now the next time you’re schmoozing at a marketing cocktail party, rather than rehashing the email subject line debate, you can bring up the From line and see if anyone knows as much as you do!

Studies are showing that although shorter subject lines (often it’s less 35 characters or seven words) work best for increasing your open rates. But guess what? Longer subject lines are better for increasing your click through rates! And possibly your conversions.

What happens is this: A longer subject line can be more specific and therefore more relevant to a smaller segment of your audience. As a result, fewer people open the email, but those that do are more interested in your offer, and therefore more likely to convert.

I doubt we’ll ever have a guaranteed email subject line length but there’s one thing I can guarantee: The way to know what works is to test, test, test, test. Remember, email marketers, in your world, testing is much more doable than in the print marketer’s world. Take advantage of that ability to boost your email marketing ROI.

For more on how to write an email subject line, see the useful guide from Lyris: “Email Subject Lines: 15 Rules to Write Them Right.” It’s available on the ClickMail Web site at http://www.clickmailmarketing.com/pdfs/Lyris_15Rules_for_Subject_Lines.pdf.

Even if you’re diligent about avoiding words like Viagra in your subject line, you can trigger spam filters with little things you probably didn’t even think of, like punctuation.

What’s a smart email marketer to do? Have no fear, here’s a great little tool that any email marketer can use to check an email subject line for spamminess: http://www.localnews.biz/subjectline/validatesubjectline.asp.

Just type in your subject line and the tool will check for word usage, capitalization, punctuation, numbers, length and more. It only takes a minute and might save you a bundle in lost revenue from your next email marketing campaign by making sure you don’t negatively impact your deliverability!