Change them up for each issue
It’s been awhile since I’ve received the HubSpot blog e-zine — whattup with my subscription, HubSpot? — but the five editions I received most recently had these subject lines:
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion
Generic subject lines — “Newsletter name” — are more likely to be deleted than opened. So says usability guru Jakob Nielsen. So says MailChimp.
Why avoid generic subject lines?
What’s wrong with this approach? Repeating subject lines:
1. Reduces opens. “It’s obvious that if you send the same campaign over and over again (such as reminders for an event), your open rates will decline with each subsequent campaign,” write the experts at MailChimp.
But how much should you expect it to decline? In one study, MailChimp tracked the results of these similar event reminders:
- 1st email: Funk n Sandi @ The Roxy on 3 March — 8% open rate
- 2nd: Funk ‘n’ Sandi @ The Roxy on 3 March — 6.3%
- 3rd: This Sat 3 Feb — Funk n Sandi @ The Roxy — 5.1%
- 4th: Don’t forget — Funk ‘n’ Sandi this Sat 3 Mar!— 3.5%
2. Makes your message hard to store. I save my e-zines for reading on planes. I’ll bet you save yours for a more convenient time, too.
The problem with generic subject lines is that they’re hard to store. When I save one with a generic subject line to my “reads” file, I have to rewrite the subject line:
- Instapaper
- Instapaper-2
- Instapaper-3
- Instapaper-4
- Instapaper-5
3. Makes your message hard to find. Oh, my God! An article in one of your e-zines has changed my life. I want to be able to refer to it often and share it with everyone I know.
But where is it? Will I find it in:
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion-2
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion-3
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion-4
- HubSpot Blog, Opinion-5
How to write specific subject lines
So how can you make your subject lines less generic?
1. Tell the story.
For years, the folks at Daily Puppy sent out this subject line … every … day:
The DailyPuppy | Pictures of Puppies
I like pictures of puppies as much as the next gal, but I’m not sure I’d open that after, say, the 100th day. But Daily Puppy recently changed its subject lines to include the puppy’s name and breed. Who wouldn’t want to:
Meet Pistachio the English Bulldog!
Don’t write e-zine subject lines like this:
April news from Litmus
New Post is up on That’s Not My Age
What’s new in MailChimp: April 2018
Instead, treat your subject lines as headlines. Summarize your lead article in subject lines like these:
5 Types of E-Commerce Shoppers
— Nielsen Norman Group
Police officer’s good deed draws praise on Facebook
— SmartBrief on Social Business
The Interpreter: How America came to love small wars
— The New York Times
Voter registration + turnout = historic midterm election
— Indivisible
Starbucks will close 8,000 locations for racial bias training
— Eater
2. Don’t repeat the sender in the subject line.
They’ve already seen your From line. Avoid wasting any of your 25-40 characters repeating that information.
Alan Weiss | Unique development from Alan Weiss
… how about delivering some details about the development?
Alan Weiss | Multiply your income with new classes
Instead of …
SEO Tips List | [SEO-Tips] Tomorrow’s SEMRush Meetup
… how about delivering some details about the development?
SEO Tips List | Save $50 on tomorrow’s SEMRush Meetup
3. Drop the date.
Most email clients display this information near the subject line. (Not that recipients are scanning your subject line for calendar information.)
Plus: Don’t let dreary details like dates get in the way of the information that actually drives opens: the contents of your e-zine or newsletter.
Overcome sender unfamiliarity
While generic subject lines don’t get clicked, enticing ones drew them into the email — even when they weren’t familiar with the senders. (And overcoming sender unfamiliarity isn’t easy.)
“When users are looking through their inboxes and dealing with vast amounts of email, any indication that a message is worth opening is helpful,” Nielsen writes.
Like this one, from Roger Dooley:
Simple Hacks to Develop a Magnetic Memory, more
Want to get opened? Change the subject line.
Get Read
Make it valuable, interesting, easy
Assuming your audience members do open your message, people spend an average of just 11.1 seconds on each email they review. That’s enough time to read about 37 words.
No wonder the No. 1 piece of advice email readers give email writers is to keep it short.
Because people read, on average, just 37 words of their emails.
At Reach Readers Online — our three-day hands-on digital-writing master class on July 24-26, 2019, in Portland — you’ll learn to beat those odds to get your message read. Specifically, you’ll learn to:- Solve the Goldilocks Conundrum. Recipients are turned off by e-zines with too much information — and by those that don’t offer enough. So how much is just right?
- Choose between three “most valuable” e-zine formats. If you’re struggling with opens, click-throughs and unsubscribes, bring one of these formats to the rescue.
- Tap the No. 1 reason people find newsletters valuable. And avoid the No. 1 reason they quit, which is responsible for 67% of unsubscribes.
- Decide when to personalize. Yes, slapping a name in the subject line may boost opens. But it can also creep readers out and make them worry about their privacy — unless you also do these two other things.
- Make it clever … but not too clever. Readers complain when your email isn’t clever, edgy, insightful or witty enough. They also complain if it’s too cutesy. Find the fine line between interesting and silly.
,Learn more about our
Portland master class.
Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017
“Best Practices for Email Subject Lines,” MailChimp, June 20, 2018
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