What are the best email subject lines?
MailChimp (an email platform we often recommend to clients) has published a fantastic and really easy to read breakdown of which email subject lines deliver the best email open rates.
The best?
- [COMPANYNAME] Sales & Marketing Newsletter
- Eye on the [COMPANYNAME] Update (Oct 31 - Nov 4)
- [COMPANYNAME] Staff Shirts & Photos
The worse?
- Last Minute Gift - We Have The Answer
- Valentines - Shop Early & Save 10%
- Give a Gift Certificate this Holiday
Of course, how well these email subject lines work (or don't work) for you will come down to trial and error, though the article should certainly have done the heavy lifting for most email campaigns.
Update to blog: 15 April 2013
I've had some interesting feedback to this blog - or more specifically the list of email subject lines - from a client. He makes some good points:
- The successful subject lines are exclusively B2B only and the usuccessful subject lines are exclsuively B2C.
- It would be interesting to know the email unsubscription rates from email subject lines; those email subject lines that might garner open rates though go onto lead to users unsubscribing... something my good colleague points out, is a short-term game many companies engage in, with misleading and excitable subject lines (designed to get users opening) with the view of often promoting open-rates to email sponsors.
But which annoy users and cause brand damage to the email sender.
I'll look up statistics on successful B2C email subject lines and post them...
