How to Write Professional Email?
Email marketing is a big name in the top marketing strategies and no one can deny its effective role in driving conversions and revenues. However, not every business using this can get the most out of it. That means It is estimated that over 82% of people don’t even bother to open the emails, and over 97% don’t bother to click any link. Why does this happen? The reason is quite simple and relatable. The world we reside in is full of information that is now more easily accessible than ever. We are always surrounded by information, be it social platforms or our surroundings, but we don’t have enough stamina to digest that all. So we overlook most of it. The same happens with professional email.
No one bothers to open boring paragraphs offering another piece of information. So to cope with this, email marketers need to catch users’ attention to get their emails opened. It is estimated that you have only the first 7 seconds to make or mar an impression. Quite less, yeah! But those initial 7 seconds can be cashed very well if you make your subject lines attractive, professional, and catchy enough to make people open them. So! Don’t know what open rates are or how to write professional email subject lines that improve open rates? Well! That’s no problem. Because I have briefed down everything, you need to know to improve your email subject lines to get your marketing efforts to bear fruit.
What Are Email Open Rates?
The percentage of the total number of recipients who open an email is called open email rates. Multiple factors that make email open rates increase or decrease are
- Email subject line
- Relevance with context
- Content
- Personalization and more.
But the most important of them all is the email subject line. value
How To Measure Email Open Rate?
Anyone who is giving email marketing a shot must need to determine how better or worse it is working. To measure that, we have a formula that goes like
Email Open Rate = Emails Opened / Emails Sent – Bounced Emails
So to define the open email rate in terms of this equation, the number you received when you subtract bounced emails from sent emails and divide opened emails by it is the open Email rate. You can easily track your email marketing performance through this formula to check what is working and what needs to be improved. For general reference, 20% to 40% value is considered a healthy open rate.
10 Tips To Craft Professional Email Subject Lines That Improve Open Rates:
Since out of all the factors that affect open email rates, the Email subject line is at the top of the list, here are some tips you can leverage to improve open rates.
Use the Words That Has Proven To Boost Open Rate
Multiple words have the capacity to make users click emails open. You can research them yourself or make sure that your email marketer adds them if you hire any. As the list is quite long, here are some of them to just give you an idea.
- Back in stock
- 48-hours giveaway
- Celebrate
- Exclusive
- %Off
- Expired
- Hurry
- Limited Offer/Time
- Register
- Special
- Continues
- Available
- Waiting
- Thank You
- Last Chance
- What
- Soon
- Still Time
- Monthly
- Introducing, and more.
Avoid The Words That Negatively Affect Open Rates:
If there are words that boost open rates, there are also words that negatively affect or lower open rates. Again, you can research them all or ask your email marketer to keep track of them. Here is a list of a few of them.
- Alert
- Lowest price
- Apply now
- Risk-free
- Newsletter
- Registration
- Not spam
- Giving Away
- Exclusive Deal
- #1
- Best price
- Perfect
- See for yourself
- Attend
- Opportunity
- No cost
- Sign up free
- Once in lifetime
- Terms and conditions
- Budget, and more.
People usually consider such words spam or unrelated and overlook them, adding to poor open rates.
Use The Words And Character To The Readable Length:
Since most users will be opening emails on mobile, it is preferable to use a specific number of characters and words to ensure complete readability. So you should only use 17 to 25 characters and 3 to 5 words in the email subject line. The smaller the length of your subject line, the more open rates you can expect to achieve.
Use A Digit/Number In Your Email Subject Line:
It is estimated that using a number in your subject line increases the chances of more open rates. Not only open rates, but people also tend to reply more when there is a number visible in the subject line. The reason for it is the number makes the email stand out, presents a clear message or offer, and tells users in seconds what to expect. So it is preferable to use one number in your email subject lines to increase the open rate.
Use Sentence Case In Your Subject Lines:
While some source recommends using title case in your subject lines, it is advisable to use sentence case instead. Because sentence case appears threatening, loud, or intimidating to most people. On the other hand,s sentence case helps keep the tone casual and friendly and can increase your number of open rates.
However, if you believe something otherwise, you can try and test both. Then see what works with your audience to finally pick one.
Add An Emoji In Your Subject Lines:
Adding a colorful graphic to the boring plain text increase the chances of it getting attention. It is seen that marketers that use emojis in their subject lines surprisingly see over a 56% increase in their open rate. Not only do emojis catch attention, but they also add a little bit of fun. So it is suggested that you use one to four emojis in your subject lines to dramatically increase your open rates. However, it is not advisable if you are writing an email subject line for work. Although emojis are harmless graphics, most people consider using them unprofessional or rude. So if you still want to add them to your professional email subject line, all the best.
Remove Roboticness:
When you write a company name in the email, it does give the feel of computerized content. That means it lacks humanness and feels robotic. So it is better to use a sender name than a company name to give users a sense of human connection. This way, they feel they are talking to a real human and not a machine. While this approach increases the open rates, any approach otherwise increases the chances of your mail going directly to the spam folder.
Avoid ClickBaits:
There is a trick certain marketers use to make users click the email to increase the open rate. The trick is to make extravagant promises or fraudulent commitments in the subject line, which gets users to open the email. But what they find is irrelevant or of context body of content that doesn’t resonate with the subject line. This is called clickbait, tricking people into fraudulent claims to get more open rates. This is quite a hateful approach that even offends users. This may get you open rates initially but will not benefit you in the long run as users will see you as a scam, and chances are they will unsubscribe you.
Address And Ask:
It is estimated that directly addressing users increases their chances of taking action than writing down your message only. That means people tend to notice when something is about them. For this, it is recommended to use the word “You” to give them a gesture you are taking to them like
- We will not give up on you.
- You are important to us. Etc.
To take the addressing game to the next level, you can ask questions, and it is also a good approach to increase open rates. When you ask questions, it seeks attention as it stirs something inside users, and they tend to get more engaged. See the below-written examples for a better idea.
- Are you doing your marketing right?
- What are the mistakes you are making? etc
Add preheader Text:
The preheader text, also known as preview text or Jonson box, is a text that appears next to the subject line and has significant importance in increasing open rates by giving users an insight into email content. It can be a preview or summarization of the whole email. Such text allows users to preview emails even without opening them.
So email marketers do their best to make this part attractive and compelling enough to make recipients open the email and read the entire text. This practice increases open rates by 7% and boosts ROI as well. Although both mobile and laptop devices provide space for a preheader, you should adjust the text so that it may not look rushy or unreadable. Here are a few tips you can utilize to write your preheader text better to increase open rates.
- A preheader should be short, to the point, and readable, so limiting the character count to 85 to 100 characters is advisable. Also, you have only a few seconds to get the user’s attention while scanning emails, so make sure to make your preheader convincing and quirky to keep them from overlooking your email.
- You should use relevant, engaging vocabulary in your preheader as you only have 100 words to get your message delivered. So make sure to provide the email subject with thoughtful keywords and verbs and if you are not writing an email subject line for work, add an emoji to leverage the attracting power of colors.
- Whether your email content or preheader text, make sure to directly address the recipient by their name or by pronouns like You or yours.
10 Ways To Write Professional Email Subject Lines To Improve Open Rate
Email subject lines are more important than you think. It is estimated that over 69% of recipients believe an email to be spam judging the subject line, and 47% of recipients tend to click on the email convinced by the subject line. So the subject line has immense control over the success and failure of your email marketing. That’s why we have created a brief list of how you can effectively write your subject line.
Intriguing Subject Lines:
Subject lines that have an element of curiosity entice subscribers into opening them and interacting as well. For example, if you ask users thought-provoking questions, offer interesting deals, and warn them about what to avoid, such subjects intrigue users and they tend to open email out of curiosity. This approach has proved to be effective as marketers using this have seen an increase in their open rates by 70%. Examples of such subject lines include
- Do you still believe this lie?
- Want to know the secret about your crush?
- You must do these 2 things etc.
FOMO Subject Lines:
FOMO, fear of missing out on something is natural to almost all humans. Marketers leverage FOMO to increase their open rates as fear makes action irresistible. Even customers confess that they tend to make impulsive purchases within 24 hours or sooner when they experience FOMO. This can be categorized as psychological marketing that involves adding the element of rarity and urgency to create such fears in the subscriber’s mind. The words like expiring, limited, 24 hours work wonders to create a sense of urgency. Examples include
- You are risking everything.
- Access expiring
- This is your last chance to avail this offer etc.
Humorous Subject Lines:
Humor in the subject lines goes a long way. If you use jokes relevant to your target audience and can successfully make them laugh or even bring a smile to their face, you have an increased chance of getting more open rates. Also, the joke can be narrated in multiple contexts. One of the significant ways of getting attention is picking a hot topic that is being talked about everywhere and then molding your message according to that. It can be anything Christmas Eve, political situations in your target audience demographics, and even a viral social media meme. Some of the significant examples include
- Even Santa is buying gifts. Why can’t you?
- Look what you made us
- Ignore this email like you ignore your Ex. etc
It can be anything, not specifically the above-written examples, they are just examples after all. But make sure to be very cautious while using this approach when you are writing email subject lines for work.
Subject Lines With A Hint Of Personalization:
Personalization is one of the most influential email marketing tactics that involve addressing your subscribers by their names. This approach has been estimated to improve open rates by 7.4% and transaction rates by six times. There is psychology attached to this, people love to hear their name, and they tend to get more alert and interested and feel valued when they see their names.
Personalization can be done in multiple ways, you can also use language relevant to your audience mentioning their interests, location, and other such things to add a personal touch (only if you know them well). There are multiple ways to utilize this approach. Some of them include
- Is this you Michael?
- Hi, Roseline! We haven’t seen you in a while.
- This is for you, Frank.
To-The-Point Subject lInes:
Although! These subject lines are not as fun or creative as others in the category but have a wider impact on recipients. Businesses make a special place in the heart of their subscribers by providing consistent yet quality content in the most straightforward way. Such subject lines have a chance of getting open rates between the range of 60 to 87% because recipients always feel excited to open such subject lines due to the quality and informative experience they always have while reading your content. Such subject lines mostly include company name, subscribers name, event, month, date, etc along with the to-the-point delivered message. Here are some examples to give you an idea of how you can craft such subject lines.
- Company name, Change your life in 10 minutes.
- Company name, You are invited to the yearly gala, Recipients name.
- Company name, Month, Year, Latest announcement.
These can also be utilized as business email subject line examples because most businesses use such subject lines when they write email subject lines for work.
Subject Lines That Are Proposed For Retargeting:
Such subject lines are mainly crafted to bring back the subscriber who was going to take an action but doesn’t complete it. It can be used as a reminder for multiple things like abandoned cart recovery subscribers unsubscribing, orders taken aback, etc. Retargeting subject lines have been estimated to increase conversion rates by 30%. Such subject lines mostly include better offers, gifts, discount offers, and more to get them back and increase open rates. Examples of such retargeting subject lines include
- Hey Lucas, We have been waiting for you.
- We will not let you go.
- Free shipping for you
- Now buy your favorite items at discounted prices etc.
Bonus/ Incentive Subject Lines:
Bonus or incentive subject lines include capitalizing incentives to increase open rates and conversions. Such subject lines include telling customers they have something inside emails for them or what benefits they can achieve through this email. Incentive subject line mostly revolves around, discount codes, gifts, free shipping, etc to convince customers into taking action. Moreover, It has been proved by a survey, where 80% of participants approve that they tend to buy from a store that offers discount offers or discount codes. Examples of such subject lines include.
- Hey Laura, we have a surprise for you.
- Buy one get one free.
- Free shipping on your next five purchases within this week.
- Get free access to our e-book etc.
Subject Lines That Target Recipient’s Pain Points:
Leveraging recipients’ pain points can get you surprisingly higher open rates if you fully know your target audience. Targeting pain points intrigues people into opening your email instantly out of curiosity, how can someone know what problem could have been facing? This approach while beneficial for improving open rates can increase your audience’s trust if they find a solution to their problem after opening your email. There are multiple ways to craft such subject lines. Here are some examples that will give you an idea.
- How to lessen deadline panic.
- Get over your ex with 10 amazing tips.
- Don’t waste time on thoughtless work.
- How to get over a manipulative friend etc.
It can be anything related to your niche and target audience. The examples are not some written-on-rock things that they are only once to add.
Ego Boosting Subject Lines:
There is no denying the fact that we all have certain egos, it can vary from more to less, but everyone has it. So another method of writing professional subject lines that improve open rates is feeding on your recipient’s ego. Again if you know your audience well, you can utilize that ego. The way to do this is by telling them what they want to hear or approving what they already feel about them. It makes them feel good, makes you unique, and drives your brand to more conversions and higher open rates. Anything that keeps our ego maintained approves of it or enhances it makes us take action immediately. Wanna know how such subject lines sound, here are a few examples to take you through the experience.
- You deserve to wear what you like.
- Hey Nancy! You will make a statement with these earrings.
- Style guides to groove your charming personality.
- Are you slaying as always? Etc.
Subject Lines That Has A Greed Factor:
Have you ever been in a situation when you didn’t want something but you bought it just because it was cheaper than usual? Yes, you got it, these subject lines work the same way. They involve adding an element of greed to make people take action. Such a subject line mostly revolves around Flat 50% off, Discount codes, bonus points, gifts, etc. If you want to know more about how such lines appear, have a look at some of the examples we mentioned below.
- Grand sale, 70% off on the entire stock.
- Win Your favorite products for free.
- Gift at shopping of $100.
- This special offer is just for you, Adeline.
3 Things You Need To Do Before Crafting A Professional Email Subject Lines That Works
You will no doubt drive conversions, get an increased open rate but these are the things of the later concern, First, you need to do these three things to expedite the output from your marketing efforts.
Define Your Purpose:
No matter what you want to do, not just your email subject lines, you should know clearly why you want to do it. That means, Have a clear goal in your head why you want to run an email marketing campaign. Ask yourself what do you want? Some of the main reasons for such marketing are
- You want to drive more conversions.
- You want to solve your subscriber’s problems etc.
Knowing your goal helps you craft your email subject lines better.
Find Your Unique Purpose:
You need to know what makes you different from other marketers. For this, you can ask yourself questions like
- What distinguishes you from other marketers?
- Why is your product better?
- What sort of product presentation enhances the open rate, and sales?
Sort Out Where To Direct Leads
Figure out where you want to direct the leads you will drive from marketing. Whether it’s your website or your social channels, where? Knowing the right place to direct leads enhances the chances of getting higher open rates.
Conclusion:
From giving Business email subject line examples to things to do before crafting professional email subject lines, we have provided every possible detail. At this point, we will only advise you one thing. Be creative with your subject lines. Your audience will love it. Believe us.