How fancy-schmancy is your email subject line?

With so many bells and whistles rolling out in social media these days, an email newsletter is not always a highly utilized integrated marketing tool in an inbound marketing campaign. In both B2B and B2C communications, the email newsletter can effectively drive traffic to your company’s website. When executing a potential leads-driven email newsletter it is important to focus on content, timing, and a well-crafted subject line.

Content is King

What information do you have to share with your target audience? Are you sending a newsletter because you always send them weekly, quarterly, or monthly? Or do you actually have relevant information to share with your client base? Sending a newsletter just to send one can actually negatively affect your subscriber base. If the information is not tailored to your target audience your audience might treat the email as spam. Accordingly, incorporating teasers in your newsletter can also increase clicks to your website or blog.

Timing is Everything

When you send out an email newsletter is just as important as the content of the email itself. Studies show that the best time of the week to send out newsletters is typically Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For B2B marketing, Mondays are usually avoided due to the high concentration of email that most people have in their inbox on Monday mornings. For B2C marketing, sending newsletters in the late afternoon or evening can cause an increase in click rates.

Your Subject Line Should Scream Open Me

You’ve crafted your latest newsletter, carefully incorporating the latest industry insight or upcoming business promotion. You quickly whip up a subject line and get ready to hit the send button. Pause! How much thought did you put into the subject line? Adestra found in a recent study, how the subject line is tailored and even the number of words and keywords can influence click rate. For instance, in the B2B sector longer subject lines fare better — anything over 16 words usually will gain more opens and clicks. For B2C marketing 20 is the magic number. It was found that 20-word subject lines received a 115 percent uplift in open rates and 85 percent uplift in clicks. B2C campaigns also saw click through rates increase dramatically when the word video was included in the subject line.

Does your company use email newsletters as a part of its inbound marketing strategy? Not sure? Let’s talk.