Subject Lines: An Important Measure of Email Marketing Success
NEW YORK--May 2, 2002--As businesses across the country increasingly turn to e-mail marketing campaigns to maximize their advertising budgets, they must ensure precise, targeted e-mail campaigns, advises Court Cunningham, Vice President and General Manager, Technology Solutions, DoubleClick Inc., the leading provider of tools for advertisers, direct marketers and web publishers.
Marketers strive to target the correct people, send out the right message, and, as a consequence, want customers to open and read the message. According to GartnerG2, e-mail advertising revenue is projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2005, up from $1.26 billion in 2002.
The quantity of e-mail correspondence of all types is sure to increase as more and more organizations realize the efficiency and value in the medium.
With the increasing clutter of the consumer`s inbox, marketers struggle to make their message noticed and read—and getting it opened is only half the battle. The e-mail subject line is usually the consumer`s first interaction with the message, so its content must be both interesting (to distinguish itself in the first place) and legitimate (to further differentiate itself from spam).
So how can marketers maximize success and create a great first impression with email subject lines? DoubleClick offers the following advice:
Highlight user benefits.
--Be specific: speak to readers on a one-to-one basis
--Personalize your subject line: personalized subject lines consistently outperform nonpersonalized ones, yielding, on average, 13% higher open rates
--Specify instant rewards or benefits, such as coupons or discounts, when you are offering them
--Sell your product or service with easily understood benefits, not company or brand-specific features
Keep the subject line succinct:
--Maintain a concise subject line
--Avoid excessive capitalization and exclamation points
--Beware of the hard sell and sensationalism; e-mail subject lines of "FREE SHIPPING! BEST PRODUCTS!" are the first deleted by anti-spam filters or simply deleted by busy consumers
--Stick with the facts, using simple, descriptive words
Brand your message:
--Remember that customers tend to be more receptive to messages from the brands they know and trust
--Include your name in the subject line (and the "From:" line too, while you`re at it) if your company is well-known to your users
--Include your affiliate company`s name in the subject if you`re sending your message to a well-known affiliate company`s list
Test your campaign:
--Measure your campaign`s effectiveness once your objectives are defined and your intelligence is gathered and analyzed
--Customize messages and test them in real-time to realize the power and return-on-investment of e-mail communications
--Test and re-test: it should be the mantra in e-mail marketing, and it`s an aspect which is often underutilized.
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