The Subject Line Can Make or Break Your Email

22 December 2009 | 6 Comments » | admin

Sending an email blast is one thing – getting your message opened is another.

  • First, the subject line needs to be shorter than a Tweet, at most 50 characters, just five or six words. That’s not even half of the 140 characters allowed for a Tweet. Too long a subject line is apt get trapped by spam filters or at best, truncated and the meaning or impact is lost.
  • The subject line must provide enough information that it will interest people in reading your message. It also needs to be enticing, raising curiosity. Here are some possible leads:

                        Seven ways to …

                        Three things to avoid to …

                        Factors to consider when ….

                        When to clean …..

  •  To get through spam filters, use sentence case – not all CAPITAL LETTERS.
  •  Avoid words in your subject that filters identify as junk mail even when it’s not.  For example, a spam filter recently entrapped an email ad our domain name “Elm Street Economy” in the subject line. We expect the filters don’t have anything against Elm Street, but economy is apparently another matter. Other words that are getting blocked: sale, discount, consumer, % off, free, and even ‘free’ being in a domain name. Anything with a sexual connation, such as hotties and stud are also unlikely to reach your recipient.

So subject lines, like headlines, must interest readers but they must also get past electronic censors.

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