[intro]Before you begin this Guide, you need to have opened an EKM Email Marketing account and designed your first email newsletter using the Visual Designer. When you have finished this Guide, you will know how you need to write the subject line for your email newsletter to encourage your readers to click on it. [/intro]

While they’re only a small part of your message, subject lines are the first thing that a customer will base their judgement on when they open their inbox. 47% of email recipients make a decision whether to open an email solely based on the subject line, therefore, first impressions are paramount. So, if you want your emails to be clickable, you need to be creative with your subject lines.

Keep it short and sweet

It’s best practice to keep a subject line short and sweet. Your subject line will be cut off on mobile devices if it’s too long, so you should try and stick to 50 characters or less. Try and get your message across by including the most important keywords, for example: ‘Don’t miss out on the fantastic 50% off sale this weekend only’’ would be more suitable as ‘Did someone say 50% off?’. You simply need to catch the attention of the reader at this stage, as all of the additional information will be disclosed inside the email. The sole purpose of a subject line is to pique interest and get them to open the email.

Convey a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency will cause your customers to act now and open your email then and there. Actionable verbs such as ‘meet your new dress’, ‘take 20% off’ or ‘Shop an extra 10% off final clearance’ are far more effective than just stating what is inside of the email, as they urge your customers to take action.

Creating urgency around a limited-time offer is another way of enticing your customers. For example, if you have a special weekend event, something like ‘This weekend only: 30% off!’ would work nicely. If the sales promotion you are running is close to ending, countdown the number of days remaining in your subject line, for example ‘Hurry! Only 2 days left in the Summer sale’, or ‘Last chance: Sale ends midnight’.

Add Personalisation

Displaying the recipient’s first name within the subject line of an email gives a sense of personalisation and importance, encouraging the recipient to open it, and pleasing the spam filters. Here are some examples of where you might use personalisation in your subject lines:

  • Sarah your payday deals are waiting!
  • Sarah, we’ve missed you
  • Here’s 10% off your next order Sarah
  • Hurry Sarah flash sale ends 9pm!

The EKM Email Marketing platform allows you to add first name tags into your subject lines so that the recipient’s name automatically displays. Now, this works fantastically as long as you actually have the customer data. However, not everyone will be willing to give you their details. If you don’t have the customer’s first name saved, nothing will display as a fallback, so it’s important that you structure your subject lines in a way that would still make sense if the first name wasn’t shown. For example:

  • Here’s 10% off your next order Sarah

Would display as:

  • Here’s 10% off your next order

But if you used punctuation, things could get messy:

  • Sarah, your payday deals are waiting!

Would become:

  • , your payday deals are waiting!

Therefore, it’s important that you keep this in mind when using personalisation tags.

Use Emojis

Emojis can be used in place of, or to complement words in subject lines; either to spice them up or to shorten them. For example, using the pizza emoji in place of the word ‘pizza’ is a great way to reduce characters while also increasing engagement. If you do decide to use emojis, make sure they are relevant to the messaging. Also, consider the fact that emojis display differently on different devices and different email clients, so testing is more important than ever.

[tips]To add emojis to an email subject line, you will need to copy them from a place such as GetEmoji, where you can easily copy and paste the emoji you’d like to use. [/tips]

If you’re unsure whether your audience will respond well to emoji use, run an A/B split test for the same email with one version including an emoji, and one ditching it. When using emojis, stay clear of using too many, particularly if they are out of context. This will just look spammy and will have a negative impact on your open rates. Take a look below at some good examples of emoji use:

Friendly Froms

Ensure that you use a familiar ‘from’ name so that your contact sounds familiar and trustworthy to your customers. If the reader doesn’t recognise the sender, the subject line won’t even matter, and the email will be disregarded. The ‘from’ line consists of two parts; the from name and the from email address.

It’s best to use your company name or brand name as your from name for most generic email campaigns that you send out. However, we will touch on why this could change in a moment. The from email address should be similar to the from name in order to further gain trust from your subscribers:

From Name:From Email Address:
The Organic Gardennewsletter@theorganicgarden.com


Ensure you use a valid email address, and please, never use ‘no reply’ in your email address as this instantly removes the personable aspect, and makes it look like you don’t care about your recipients.

Personal Names

While it is usually best practice to use your company name as your ‘from’ name, there are situations where a person’s name could be used. For example, let’s say you were sending an email thanking your customers for choosing to shop with you – giving a little more background story to your business. Here, using the business owner’s name followed by the company name would be a special touch that would give the customer a far more personal connection to your business.

E.g. Samuel King, The Organic Garden

It’s important to still include the company name so that your customers can recognise who the email is from.

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[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]