It’s not unusual to open up your email browser and be greeted with a slew of new emails, especially after COVID-19 decimated traditional business landscapes and forced nearly all marketing online. With so many businesses competing for clicks, consumers have grown weary of the same subject lines recycled over and over again. For companies trying to stand out, this is quite the concern – even if the contents of the email were fantastic, a boring subject line demotivates readers from opening the email (worse yet, it motivates them to trash the message). If you’re struggling to improve your open rates, worry not. With the help of Nathan Littleton’s book Opened: Great Subject Lines for Higher Email Open Rates, let’s examine interesting ways to keep subject lines fresh!
Finding the right voice
First impressions are everything. Think of the tone of your subject line as the outfit you wear on a first date. Do you show up in a classic t-shirt and jeans? A three-piece suit? Or perhaps one of those wacky T-Rex costumes?
Your subject line’s tone of voice is equivalent to how you dress for the date. “Whether you’re a single-person business or a multi-national conglomerate, your business is a brand which has an identity, a personality and voice,” writes Littleton. “Every piece of marketing you write is a representation of that voice, so it has to reflect the perception you want people to have of your organisation.”
Littleton illustrates this point through a keynote and workshop session for a shipping firm. “I’d written a campaign to be sent to the list of a willing audience member who had agreed to be my guinea-pig for the day.” The campaign had several objectives:
· Warm up the list that hadn’t been emailed to in a couple of years
· Remind subscribers of who the sender is
· Let subscribers know that they’d be receiving expert tips and advice over the weeks that followed
· Ask if they had a package they needed delivering right away
For this, Littleton needed a good subject line. As expected, audiences suggested the usual subject line tips – be interesting, intriguing, personal, genuine and succinct – all of which had their merits, but Littleton decided one that caused “a little controversy” to be the most ideal. This was what he went with:
“How big is your package?”
Gutter thoughts aside, it was a legitimately good subject line that fit all four of the objectives. It could serve as a cold call subject that reminded past audiences about what the company did, and because the subject was structured as a question, it could be interpreted in several ways – from a literal sense, it conjures thoughts of us at DHL arranging a package for delivery. However, you might also imagine a shipping and packaging guru asking the same question. What is the optimal size to a package? If not, we should probably listen further and find out. Although brilliant, some audience members understandably felt it was inappropriate.
“For some businesses, a subject line such as that is perfectly fitting with the voice and personality their brand portrays, while for others, it may be a step too far,” explains Littleton. Theoretically, the tone of the subject line should be similar to past campaign content. It’d be out of character for a brand like Louis Vuitton to deviate from their sophisticated and luxury style of writing, but for a lifestyle brand like Durex or Samsonite where campaigns usually follow a conversational tone for everyday consumers… going for the controversial route could work!
Remember, email subject lines take experimenting to get right. Try tweaking the tone over different emails to see which has the highest open rate, then confirm whether it’s a fluke or not by modelling subsequent emails after it. After several rounds of testing, you’ll find one that’s tailored to your audience.
Subject line hacks
We’ve already covered the basics on subject lines in a previous article, but Littleton offers several more handy tricks to try.
Benefits
People are often preoccupied by their troubles. Highlighting how you could benefit them feeds their desire for self-preservation and betterment – furthermore, if it’s combed with value (e.g. “free” or “on sale”), they’ll be even more inclined to check you out. For example, if we were promoting portable fans worn around the neck, here’s how we might write a subject line:
“Already September and it’s still boiling… Try Wham-O fans!”
“No more hot summers with this neck fan – now half off just for you!”
How-tos
“A ‘how-to’ subject line should be used on emails where you’re providing a solution to a challenge or opportunity that your reader has, in the form of an educational article, a quick tip or even a product or service that you’re offering,” describes Littleton. “It should include a reference to the specific challenge or opportunity you’re helping with.”
“How Wham-O fans are making Hong Kong summers more bearable”
“How to create the perfect heat and stress free summer”
Negative outcome avoidance
Most consumers are risk adverse. Given how many consequence can have debilitating effects, people naturally want to avoid risk if possible. Provided the consequence is plausible, if you or your services could help them to avoid that outcome, readers’ eyes will perk up upon seeing your subject line!
“ Don’t get cooked alive outside this summer with Wham-O!”
“ Heatstroke kills – here’s how to avoid it!
Scarcity and urgency
The fear of missing out (FOMO) can induce people to put aside rationality. They may not really need your product or service at this very moment, but if there’s a limit or scarcity surrounding it, consumers will be more willing to see what the fuss is about. Although this is a great tactic for motivating immediate action, we recommend not using this tactic across subsequent subject lines – this is especially the case if you tend to promote the same products a lot. Once consumers catch on that there isn’t really a scarcity, they’ll condition themselves to ignore you.
“These Wham-O neck fans are selling out fast!”
“Wham-O fan sale ends in 3 days – have you gotten yours yet?”
Commands
“Commands are useful for getting actions quickly, and they’re most effective when you know how they fit within a sequence of emails,” points out Littleton. “They tend to imply that the next step for something to happen is a quick and easy one, so your recipients are more likely to do what you say more quickly.” Think of this as a very specific call-to-action!
“Pick a colour for your Wham-O fan!”
“Claim your Wham-O fan in three easy steps”
When it comes to subject lines, there’s no guaranteed way to raise opening rates. Using FOMO works on some people, but just like in poker, you can’t expect a bluff to work against everyone. Test out the various techniques over a series of email campaigns to see which works best for your audience.