Every once in awhile, many people get a curious poke into what’s happening inside of the SPAM portion of their inbox.

There are always a few emails that slip by in your inbox that are obviously spam, but even their subject lines grab your attention. The truth is, you know that they’re in the wrong place but your interest was piqued by a certain word or phrase in the subject line that caused you to open it.

What caused you to open it and why is that what matters?

The Subject

When it comes to email marketing, even when it’s a brand you are familiar with, you sometimes put it into the trash before you even open it. This is done for a number of reasons:

• You’re tired of seeing emails from this company
• You don’t have time to read it
• You aren’t interested in making any purchases at that time
• The subject line was not interesting

Despite what reason you chose to trash the email, the purpose of that message was not served. The purpose of email marketing is to grab the attention of the audience, while in their emails, to get them to visit the page or make a purchase from the offers you have exclusively sent to them. If the email is being trashed before it’s even seen, your subject line is not doing its job.

Remember – the subject line for an email is the headline for an article. Nobody will click past the headline if it doesn’t grab their attention.

Using Sensitive Words

Like content marketing, email marketing requires a certain amount of flair added to the text. Unfortunately, like a headline, the subject line of the email must be powerful and fast enough to capture the reader’s interest – because it takes half as long to read the subject as it does to click the trash button.

One of the best ways to quickly grab one’s attention, so they can get the important stuff in the inside, is to use time-sensitive words.

You’re more likely to open an email that is giving you a deadline or letting you know its urgency. Some other beneficial words to choose from can be:

• Urgent
• Important
• Breaking News
• Announcement
• Invitation

These words insist to the reader that there is something inside, that if they miss it, it will disappear. Words like announcement or invitation tell the audience that there is an exclusive piece of information for them that can only be found in their emails. Be sure to avoid words such as ‘ending’ or ‘cancellation’ – in the mind of the reader, if it’s cancelled, there is no point in reading it.

Personalization

This word alone is pretty self-explanatory. Personalizing emails is fairly similar to paper marketing through mail.

Do you read the letters that arrive in your mailbox addressed to ‘resident’ or ‘homeowner’? The answer is almost always no. Why is an email inbox any different than a tangible mailbox?

People want their emails to be personalized – even when the reader knows the message is from a company, they want to see their first or last name. A personalized subject line makes the reader feel that the message is individualized to that person only.

Avoid using impersonal subject lines, such as the first part of their email address or ‘Mr.’ and ‘Miss’. If you know their first and last name, use it to your advantage.

Email marketing can be tough if you’re using tactics that are outdated or informal. Sign up for our free newsletter to get exclusive tips on how to properly utilize email marketing – it’d be a shame if your email marketing was unsuccessful because of a few tiny mistakes!