Many people use the subject line to establish whether or not to remove an email or mark it as spam. So those 50 characters in the subject line have to be just right, because a good subject line will get your email opened.

The first mission is coming up with something that will grab the attention of your contacts. What I mean by grabbing their attention is getting the person receiving the campaign to take some kind of action that can be tracked: Opening the email, clicking on a link or simply coming into your store and purchasing something.

So it is important to develop a trusting relationship with your contacts. One of the cardinal rules of email marketing software subject lines is make sure that your reader knows what to expect from your emails. The subject line has to be relevant to the reader, so be as specific as possible.
If you are generic in your subject line, it is likely you won’t get the reaction you want. Let them know the subject of the email or how to take advantage of the offers in the email.

There are probably hundreds of emails that your contacts are constantly sifting through. A contact’s time is valuable to them. They will take the time to open your email as long as you remind them why they signed up for your email marketing campaigns in the first place.

The next step is to determine what is the purpose of your email. What is it that you want your contacts to do? Then make sure that you subject line properly expresses that. If you want to increase your sales by having contacts take advantage of a promotion, then your subject line shouldn’t say something about a new product line you have in. Your subject line should say something like “come in and get 50% off”.

Another great thing that will help you with your email marketing subject line success is looking back at your email marketing software reports and statistics. See which email campaigns elicited the greatest amount of conversion and then see what subject line you’ve used. Your subject line may have had something to do with why this particular email campaign found success with parts of your mailing list.

Take what you’ve learned from your stats and play around with the subject lines. Test them out on different portions of your contact list. You’ll get some incredible insight on the exact things that attract your contacts’ attention.

While planning your email campaign you should be determining the focus or purpose of that email. Once you’ve got that down, state that purpose in your subject line. This will make sure that your emails are more relevant to your contacts and can end up increasing the measurable action that contacts take as response to your emails.

Email marketing subject lines can be a handful, but adhering to some simple email marketing principles will greatly improve your chances of success.