Anyone with email gets email junk. It fills inboxes. Most people read the subject line and if it doesn’t get them, they move on to the next one. It’s not even real reading. People scan looking for keywords that are relevant to them. And forget about using emojis. Emjois draw the eye so the scanning recipient doesn’t even register the words. What a waste of someone’s valuable marketing time. In reality, you have less than a heartbeat, a mere flash of time, to make your subject line hit home so your email gets opened. Here’s a few pointers to help you make your subject lines work.
Tell Them What They Will Miss
A great way to create a perfect email subject line is to write something suggesting your recipients are going to miss out if they don’t read the full email. We all have an innate fear of missing out, and you can use this to your advantage by creating an element of urgency or scarcity. Your subject lines also work well if they present as time sensitive. Useful words for this are ‘breaking’, ‘urgent’, ‘alert’, or short phrases like, ‘take immediate action’. Use them sensibly and you will notice an increase in email open rates.
Make Them Curious
Another way to use psychology to increase your email open rates is to make subject lines intriguing. People don’t like to have “incomplete” knowledge of something relevant to them, and you can use this natural desire to motivate your subscribers into opening your message. Try a subject line that works like a cliffhanger and the only satisfaction they get is by opening the email. You can also make your subscribers curious by promising something very interesting or posing a serious question.
Make it Funny
An interesting way to encourage your subscribers to open your email and read it, is to make your subject line funny. The idea is to make your readers laugh, and they’d like to get more of that happiness by reading the entire message. However, understand that although being funny helps you get better email open rates, you have to be very creative to be able to produce something every time that tickles your subscribers funny bone.
Try Vanity as a Weapon
Making your subscribers feel special is a surefire way to motivate them to take specific actions. You can use this psychological trait and create email subject lines that make your subscribers feel accepted, valued and respected. Sometimes, a subject line invoking a fear of embarrassment as a critical friend also works.
Take Advantage of Greed
By nature, human beings will always have an element of greed and that is something you can use when crafting your email subject lines. You know people love to save money, which is why they cannot resist an offer that talks about discounts. Similarly, other kinds of special offers work great, especially when those that appear as a reward for loyalty or spending over a set limit. You have to be careful when using these tactics. If you talk about ‘enormous’ discounts, it makes your email look too good to be true and that will have a negative impact on your open rates. Be realistic and have clear terms and conditions so you don’t leave yourself in a position where you have to disappoint.
Your subject line is an opportunity not to be wasted. Despite receiving so many often unsolicited emails, people do still check their inboxes regularly and are always on the lookout for something credible to their benefit. After all, it is not as if there’s any real effort involved opening an email. People just need a reason to want to open yours and a good subject line can give them that.
