Published By Martin Aranovitch

Your subject line is a one-shot opportunity to convince the consumer that not only are you a valid business, but that you have something that they need, and should open the email to find out more. In this day and age when people are more likely to trash an email than open it, the subject line is crucial to making sure your mailing list doesn’t get banned...

Mailing lists are a great way to reach out to potential customers.  Such a great way, in fact, that most of us have become inundated with both junk and valid emails.  The average consumer is a lot more wary of emails than they used to be. 

According to a 2007 Jupiter Research report, more than a third of your readers will open your email based on what you write in your subject line. And when they open, you are only part way to your ultimate goal of getting them to take the action you desire, such as clicking-through to your website, picking up the phone, or registering for an event.

A Small Window Of Opportunity

Your subject line is a one-shot opportunity to convince the consumer that not only are you a valid business, but that you have something that they need, and should open the email to find out more. In this day and age when people are more likely to trash an email than open it, the subject line is crucial to making sure your mailing list doesn’t get banned.

Your email subject line motivates the user to open your email. If it is dull or meaningless, it’s not going to be opened.

Also, think about this. Two emails arrive in your inbox at the same time. One is from an old friend who always sends you useful tidbits of information. The other email is from a complete stranger with a subject line promising you instant riches with no work involved.

It’s a no brainer guessing which email gets opened and which email gets sent straight through to the delete folder, right? Well, most successful email marketers get high clickthrough rates because they are considered to be old friends by most of their subscribers. They write emails that read like they come from a friend, and this includes what they write in their subject lines too.

This brings us to the number 1 secret of creating successful email marketing campaigns:

Make your subject lines as compelling as possible.

Not much of a secret, eh?

Then, how about the number 2 secret:

Bad email subject lines, poor email opening rates. Good email subject lines, good email opening rates.

It seems like it's mostly just common sense, right?

Well, here's the good news ... it is mostly just common sense, with some courtesy and respect for others mixed in!

Let's take a look, then, at some other useful things to know about getting your emails opened and read ...

Useful Email Marketing Tips

Here are some of the main points to keep in mind when thinking about email subject lines:

• Make it relevant to your target.
• Don’t use excessive punctuation. (But use it where’s it’s necessary)
• Don’t send too many, or the same one over and over.
• Don’t try to sneak it past them.

Let's examine this subject a little bit further ...

You obviously picked your mailing list with something in mind. An age group, socio-economic group, people who love Italian food, or, if you’re lucky, people who’ve requested more information from you.  Keep these people in mind when writing your subject line.  If you were them, what would make you open the email?  An email subject line that has nothing to do with your recipient, or seems to have been written without any forethought at all will buy you a trip straight to the garbage bin. 

Don’t use excessive punctuation. Using lots of exclamation points (!!!!) and question marks (???) are a sure-fire way to get you mailing list banned before it even reaches the consumer’s inbox. Search engines will often automatically interpret emails with this kind of punctuation in the subject line as spam.  There are words to be avoided as well, such as “exclusive”, “free”, “limited time”.  Combine those phrases with excessive punctuation and you’re pretty much guaranteed that your mailing list is going to get banned.

Practice absolute discretion when using that send button.  Send emails out to your mailing list sparingly; and for the love of cute little kittens, make sure you don’t just send them the same emails over and over.  By putting thought and effort into each and every email you send to your mailing list, you increase your chances of getting them to open it and click through to your site.

Writing a subject line that alludes to a previous connection to the recipient?  Trying to come across as an email from a friend?  If you do manage to catch someone and they open it, once they start to read the email they will realize right away that it’s not what it seemed to be, and it will also go straight to the trash and get your mailing list banned.

The final tip is golden: Treat your mailing list like the potential gold mine it is; with deference and respect.  By putting as much thought into the subject line as you do the rest of the email, you’ll establish a better connection with your prospective customers and avoid being banned.

Business Email Marketing Tips

Two main factors that affect email opening rates are the From and Subject fields. As a good email marketer you should already know that the From field must clearly identify the sender.

You can always split-test your emails to see which subject line creates better results. Simply send identical emails to equal number of recipients and make sure the only thing that is different in both emails are their subject lines.

A great email marketing tool you may want to consider using is Aweber. They are a proven, reliable, established and well-known email marketing solution provider, and, as a result of this, guarantee 99% email deliverability. In other words, most email communications sent using Aweber (e.g. email newsletters, mailouts, autoresponder messages, email broadcasts, etc.) will get delivered to your recipient’s inbox and not end up in their junk folder.

For more information about Aweber, click on the link below:

http://www.PortalFeederPro.com/aweber.html

Of course, you still have to write a compelling message to ensure it gets opened, but by testing your email campaigns, you will start to create a system for sorting the winners (i.e. emails that get better conversion rates) from the losers (poor converting emails).

It is useless to compare one subject line from an email you sent today and another from an email you sent a year ago, but if you send the emails at the same time, the open rate metric might be able to tell you which one performed better. Your subject lines will have a lot to do with whether or not your emails stand out in the inbox.

Pay careful attention to email subject lines that catch your eye and study what makes them so effective. Generally, we are like our customers, so if an email subject line catches our eye, chances are they will work for others too. Similarly, if an email subject line doesn’t motivate you to open the email, it will probably have the same effect on other email recipients too.

Do not resort to using anything other than text in your subject line. Spam filters do not like too much punctuation in the subject line and will immediately filter your email to the junk folder. Microsoft's Outlook Junk filter can easily filter your email if you use certain words and symbols in your subject line and/or body text.

For a useful current list of what Outlook filters, go here:

http://office.microsoft.com/Assistance/9798/newfilters.aspx

I hope you have found this article useful and I wish you great success in your future email marketing campaigns.

About:

Martin Aranovitch is a successful SME (small to medium enterprise) business coach, sales trainer and web business entrepreneur. Visit his site www.SocialBusinessWeb.com  to download a FREE report on How To Profit With Your Own Social Networking Site .

Source: http://www.portalfeederpro.com

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