The subject line you put on your email is one of the two most important aspects of whether your email gets opened or instantly deleted.
As I talked about last issue, over 60% of your prospects are going to use the “from” line to weed out a lot of emails. But the second indicator that will be looked at to see if your email is worthy of a deeper look is the subject line.
From a direct response perspective, the subject line is like a teaser line on a direct mail outer envelope. It's there to help cut through the clutter and get the email opened.
But subject lines are also like billboard headlines—you only have a limited number of words to say what you need to say, and these days many email programs display as few as 30 characters in the subject line preview box.
Now this does not mean that your subject line can be only 30 characters, but those 30 characters need to be as strong as you can make them. Subject lines need to pique the reader’s interest enough to get the email opened. So it is important to test subject lines in your emails.
Here is a test that I did for one of my clients where I tested a long and a short version of a similar subject line.
The Test: The email blast promoted an investment opportunity from a well-known financial newsletter writer. The lists were split evenly between two subject lines and the email was sent to 233,000 recipients. The email was sent to lists targeted to financial investors. I tested the subject line “Double-play gain on gas and oil” against the longer “Ken Coleman’s subscribers’ May Update: Double-play Opportunity in oil and gas.”
Results: The shorter, “Double-play gain on gas and oil” had an open and click-through rate that was 36.3% better than the longer subject line.
Do you think you know why?
Let me know what you think—send me an email with your thoughts to inquire@cdmginc.com. We will publish the best responses in our next issue.
A quick note about last week’s test:
Last week we looked at a couple of things that were tested to make online order forms more efficient at closing the sale. I wanted to comment further on the background color test. The results showed that a white background was more successful than a colored background.
I was not surprised. We know from testing in other media that white is easy on the eye and makes it easier to read the text. Colored backgrounds should be reserved for small boxed areas where you want to call special attention and that should be limited to a proven color such as yellow that provides a background that text can be read over.
Interested in more marketing case histories and their results? Click here.
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