I’ve been a/b testing a lot lately – I usually do this with most of my campaigns, using a sample group to test and then sending the best subject line to the rest of the list. Our email providers latest update claims to do this automatically (if you want) – but I’m not sure I trust it entirely…

Anyway – I keep reading that the best way to write good subject lines is to pick up a newspaper. Many believe if you use journalistic style headings then people will want to read your emails. I don’t believe this is accurate.

Journalistic style headings work in Newspapers because someone has already shelled out money to buy a product from a brand they trust – they already want to read the paper. If they are buying it as a one off, for the news title, they are likely to buy the paper they trust and are loyal to.

Your email in their inbox doesn’t work like this. People are filtering out the emails – what get’s past the filtering technology is then up against the filtering done by the recipient themselves – anything too pushy is likely to be skipped over or trashed.

The key to a good subject line is just to tell them facts regarding the email content – if you sell too hard in the subject line, it will be sniffed out as SPAM by your recipients and the resultant open rate will be poor.

Just include the main theme, matter of fact. If your audience is well targeted, try and include some facts in the 50 character limit. Whatever you do don’t make it look like a question – I hate these emails and my mouse goes straight for the delete button.

If you have a company name that is well regarded and your recipients will recognise it, use it. Your company name conveys a certain amount of trust in your relationship with your customer, so this can only add value.

If you really need to use ‘buy, buy, buy’ and money off techniques then maybe your email isn’t that relevant – if the content is not good, then you don’t really have a leg to stand on and no matter how good your effort to promote it, it won’t do much good.