Thursday 26 July 2012

The Subject is Everything!

When people are creating an email marketing campaign to promote their online business or store or the products they sell, many tend to focus on the actual content within the email. They want it to be bright, colourful, inviting and informative, giving the recipient as much information as they can to entice them to visit their store.

Obviously, what is in your email is incredibly important, but many people tend to focus so much on this aspect of the campaign, that they overlook all other parts of it, particularly the subject. 

The subject of an email is the tag line or heading for that specific email. This is the first thing a person will see when they come across your email. Your subject line is literally the difference between your email campaign being a success or a failure! You could have the most amazing, insightful and enticing content within the email that would make countless readers flock to your site instantly, but if your subject doesn't engage and create interest, this content will never been seen. It won't be clicked on, it won't be opened, it will simply be sent straight into the users trash bin.

Starting to see how important the subject is? Having a good subject heading will give your email the best chance of success, meaning you won't have wasted your time creating something that isn't even seen.

When setting up an email marketing campaign, once you know the message you want to include within your email, you next need to focus on how to draw them into that content through the subject line.

But how do you know what is a good subject line? 

A good subject line should be engaging, thought provoking and above all appealing, it needs to stand out from the crowd, instantly urging you to click on it. However, with the shear amount of email marketing that sent to customers on a daily basis, by trying to stand out, you simply become one of the masses. 

What I mean by this is that everyone is looking for this edge that will help their email stand out in your inbox. For example, if you are running a promotion or a competition for your store, you may think that having the subject heading "WIN WIN WIN" is going to be a great way to catch the customers eye, enticing them with the chance for free products. In fact, when people see this type of heading, they instantly think that your message is spam and will more often than not send the message to the it of despair that is the trash bin.

How do you find the right subject line?

The best way to find the right subject line for your business is through the use of spread marketing. This works by sending test emails to a small number of customers to gauge the success of the subject. For example, if you have a email subscriber list of  20,000 customers, you may create five different marketing emails, each consisting of a different unique subject heading. You will then send each of these emails out to 1,000 different customers. After the emails have been send out, you will the be able to see how successful each email was in enticing the recipient to open it up. 

Once you have determined which is the most successful subject heading, you then send the email with that heading to the rest of your 15,000 subscribers. This will give your email marketing campaign the best chance of succeeding. 

When embarking on an email marketing campaign, preparation is key to success. Randomly sending out emails here and there is going to result in you receiving little success. Take the time to plan out an email, test out the different parameters and ensure that you are doing everything you can to make it a success. Monitoring the opens, traffic and other statistical data that your email generates will give you a good indication as to the success of each  email campaign.

While the content within the email is important remember that the other aspects of the email are just as important such as the subject, when you send it out and who you send it to. 

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