Challenges to Email Subject Line Use

Email marketing is one of the most important ways for businesses to market their products and services. It's important for email subject lines to accurately reflect the content so that users can respond based on what they're interested in. However, most email clients now have features that make it easy to identify spam messages, which may be more detrimental than helpful when looking at an email's subject line. This post discusses some common mistakes businesses make when creating their email subject lines and ways these companies can improve their approach.

SEMrush, a popular marketing resource website, conducted a study on email subject lines and found that 60% of the companies surveyed used more than one subject line. This practice may be helpful for businesses with product lines or different customer groups who use multiple products or services. For businesses without these types of offerings, however, it may be better to use only one subject line that accurately reflects the content of the email. Many companies also use longer subject lines (such as "Attention Customers: Pricing Changes" instead of "Prices Will Increase") which is misleading to their customers and does little to help them identify relevant offers.

Comparing how each company's subject line performed in terms of open rate and click-through rate, it's clear that many companies are doing more harm than good when crafting their email content. In order to limit the confusion their customers may experience and help them find the offers that will be most helpful, here are some common mistakes businesses make when creating their email subjects:

1. Not including all relevant information in the subject line. Click-through rates can be as low as 3%. When combined with a long subject line, these rates could drop even lower. The more words in an email subject line, the less likely it is that users will actually read it. By creating a subject line that accurately reflects the content in the email, it will be more likely that users will click through.

2. Not using promotions or coupons to call out offers. This is especially important in email marketing as 80% of emails are opened with promotions or coupons included within the body of the message.

3. Over-categorizing their message. Some companies use multiple subject lines to differentiate between each type of offer, such as "Preferential Rate Offer" instead of "20% off." This causes potential customers to read any other subject lines before reading theirs which could result in missed opportunities for their brand's offers and higher costs.

4. Using an excessive amount of words in their subject lines. Due to software that scans email messages, some subject lines may not even be seen by users. By keeping the message brief and relevant, users are more likely to see the content and respond.

Sources: http://www.emlginc.com/blog/email-marketing-spam-complaints/

http://semrush.com/blog/email-marketing-campaigns/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-4-things-wrong-email-subjects-sugandh-rocky

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/23001199/longer-subjectlines-lessenscans

Like this: Like Loading...

Conclusion :

As seen above from the Email Subject Line article, there are four common mistakes that businesses make when creating their email subject lines. This can greatly increase the rate of spam complaints and also reduce open rates.This is because many emails that contain a spam complaint will often include an email subject line that betrays the content of the message. For example, price increases, shipping and delivery changes, and information about new products or services are all common subjects for spam complaints because they are not relevant to any of their recipients. However, if companies create a subject line that accurately reflects the important information in their emails then they can avoid issues with spam complaints and also improve their click-through rates.