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Don’t forget the subject line

31 October 2007 | Dominic Sawyer

The importance of email subject lines

When a new email drops in your inbox how do you decide whether to open it?

Deciding factors usually include recognition and reputation. Do you know the sender and have you had a good experience with them?

Another is subject lines. Whatever the aim of your email marketing message, you won’t succeed if it isn’t opened. Yesterday evening I received an email from the ‘TravelMole Press Zone’ with the subject line ‘WTM 2007 Press Release’. Pretty dull.

A finely tuned subject line is perhaps the simplest short-term way to help improve your email marketing results but so often overlooked in preference for the copy within. In this case it was about developments in Dubai.

Why is it so important to get right? Along with the ‘From’ column it’s the only bit of information that users see when they scan their crammed inbox - even more so as WTM approaches!

There is no one best method, keep testing and adapting. Here are some links for writing successful subject lines.

- The Art of Writing E-Mail Subject Lines
- Optimizing Your Subject & From Lines for Email Clients
- Email Subject Lines that actually work