Titles are important. Whether it’s a book that people are looking for or a blog post they are reading online, titles are the reason people decide to follow through with something and whether they want to invest time or money in your business.
When you are sending out email campaigns, you need to know that your title is catchy. You need to know that it will work and that it will attract the kind of attention that you need to get them to take action. There are many factors that influence whether customers are likely to open the email. One thing is for sure: you have to stand out and get their attention somehow, better than anyone else.
Ten Excellent Resources to Help You Creating Killer Email Titles
1. Adestra – In this 23-page eBook resource guide about email titles, Adestra outlines some of the most important aspects of creating a compelling email title. One of the points they make is that shorter email titles are more effective.
Adestra points out that the type of business you have will influence the type of title that works the best. They also point out that the type of business affects the number of words you need in the body as well. Read the guide for yourself to learn more.
2. Contact Monkey – This guide talks about how there is no “perfect” subject line for an email campaign. This site is very credible because they have looked at millions of emails and recorded the results of the responses to determine the factors that most influence sales and conversions.
On an interesting note is that they discovered the putting “Re” in the subject line got a 92% open rate! Sometimes it is just that simple.
3. Litmus – This guide focuses on the fact that people look at the “From” line before they focus on the subject or body of an email. They point out that you are competing with numerous friends and acquaintances that they would rather hear from than you. So you have to come up with a way to appeal to them. However, they stress that you should never resort to Black Hat techniques to achieve this.
4. Improving Your Open Rates – This guide put out by Constant Contact, gives you 12 great tips on how to grab the attention of your target audience and get them to open your sales emails at a higher rate.
One of the tips focuses on keeping the content short, direct, and to the point. They also mention the importance of avoiding looking like “spam” in your messages. Provide genuine value and write a tagline and call-to-action that is likely to increase the click through rate and level of conversions.
They also suggest using humor and deadlines to communicate entertaining content and the fact that the deal won’t last forever to increase results. Read the guide in its entirety to learn more.
5. Vertical Response – This guide focuses on seasonal emails. Seasons are something that we need to be aware of as entrepreneurs. People in our target audience are sensitive to this fact, and we should be too.
To leverage the power of holidays in your emails, create attractive holiday-themed emails that will get their attention. One title that worked well is: “Shutterfly: We’re feeling very merry. Get 50% off your order.” Anything that acknowledges that it is a holiday and that the business wants to help customers save money will work well.
6. Campaign Monitor – This site and guide on email titling and marketing focus on the power of choosing a “genre” type for your email campaign. For example, if you want it to be something that follows the current trends and to appear to be modern, choose the “trendy” format. This format of email title can include words such as: “Trending now: Fall Colors,” or other similar trendy topics.
If you want to start your email with a question, you could ask: “How safe are your family jewels?” Of course, the title should always have something to do with your business and turn your receiver’s mind into something that gets them in the mindset you want them to be in to make your pitch.
7. Snapsurveys.com – This guide is helpful because it tells you how to keep the focus narrow and direct as it pertains to what you want the reader to do. It also talks about the importance of using some of the information that’s out there from online publications to appeal to their level of engagement.
Choose action words that compel people to click on your link in your email to spur them to action.
8. Pardot.com – Pardot has a resource guide that gives a list of “DOs and DON’Ts” that should guide your decisions in creating your email titles.
Urgency is an important component, Pardot says, and you should include this sense of urgency in all of your emails to customers and prospects.
Remember that you are always going to be competing with many other email messages that users will get every day and your has to stand out among the clutter. Some of the “DON’Ts” mentioned by this guide include using special characters and all capital letters in your email titles or subject lines. You also need to keep your title to what you want to tell them about and less about what you want to sell them.
9. WordStream – Wordstream suggests creating a funny subject line or including a controversial subject line. They also state that single-word subject lines work well if they address something that is of interest to the reader.
Unlike some of the other resource guides, WordStream suggests occasionally shaking things up by including different types of characters or fonts to draw attention and get the reader to click and take action.
Another good point made in this guide is that you need to create a need or lack. Using what they call “scarcity” tactics, you can increase the level of want by making people think there is a limit to when they can have access to the product or service.
10. Mailchimp – Mailchimp, a well-known automated email service, developed this guide to tell business managers how to get more people to take action on the emails you send.
One of their suggestions that caught our eye was to include “localization,” by including the city and state in which the target audience lives. This would only work if you have leads from specific areas or if you have a business that you want to encourage customers to visit “in person” within their local area. But is is a good technique if you want to increase your geographic marketing power.
Just do it! Start Using these Email Title Tips and Resources Today!
We’ll borrow Nike’s famous slogan as we close this post. We hope we got your attention again. The point of all of this is that you have to get and keep the attention of people by creating simple but direct, attention-getting email subject lines that command their attention.
So, as you are thinking about how to title your business emails, keep these things in mind as you choose your titles for your email campaigns. Remember with some imagination and a little creativity, you can come up with a great email title that is sure to get attention, clicks, and conversions.
As always, if you would like to discover how AfterOffers.com can instantly bring 100 to 1,000+ new subscribers to your mailing list every single day, click here to contact us.