Among the most popular subject lines for my e-zine Wylie’s Writing Tips:

Now you see it

The Awwww Factor

Paint the schnauzer

One-sentence stories

Can you read me now?

Don’t commit verbicide

Pleading for shorter sentences

Want to write subject lines that get clicked? Make them entertaining.

Why write clever email subject lines?

Entertainment comprises 2 of the top 3 reasons people share information via email or social media, according to a study by Chadwick Martin Bailey, are:

1. Because I find it interesting/entertaining (72%)
2. To get a laugh (58%)
3. Because I think it will be helpful to recipients (58%)

In another study, three Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that subject lines that make recipients curious about the contents are more likely to get opened than those that don’t.

5 steps to crafting an entertaining subject line

So how do you write subject lines that are entertaining, funny or pique readers’ curiosity? Here are five ways:

1. Make it clever …

Try a little cheekiness, as in this subject line from RLM PR about a media barbecue with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos:

Jeff Bezos Has Great Buns

Or twist a phrase, like the fashion company River Island:

There’s no business like shoe business

Or steal a tip from Weather Underground and post a pun:

Weather to pack sunscreen or an umbrella

Or tie your message to a timely topic, as in this subject line from Ragan:

Mr. Rogers’ guide to healthy corporate culture

Note that while all of these subject lines are clever, they are also clear.

2. … But not too clever.

This Cato Fashions subject line bombed in a study by usability expert Jakob Nielsen:

Be Iconic

So did this clickbait subject line from AT&T:

Steven, wait until you see this!

As did this InterContinental Hotels subject line:

Open Your (I)s to the Wonders of the Sea

Users in the NNG studies complained of “irritatingly cutesy” subject lines. Ouch! Don’t let that phrase apply to your messages!

3. Have a personality.

Make your message personable. In one split test, SmartBrief invited readers to opt in to a newsletter. One subject line:

You’re not receiving your [industry] news

The other:

We’re sorry to see you go …

The second, more personable subject line increased the open rate by 50% and the number of subscribers by more than 60%.

4. Avoid clickbait.

Subject lines with clickbait phrases — won’t believe, shocking and secret of — reduced read rates by .34%, 1.22% and 8.69%, respectively, according to research by Return Path.

5. Avoid labels.

“CEO’s Christmas message” is a label subject line. What does she say in her message? That’s a lot more compelling.
___

Source: “The Art And Science Of Effective Subject Lines” (PDF), Return Path, September 2015

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Useful information is among the top three reasons people share information via email or social media, according to research by Chadwick Martin Bailey:

• Because I find it interesting/entertaining (72%)
• Because I think it will be helpful to recipients (58%)
• To get a laugh (58%)

Those findings echo research by three professors at Carnegie Mellon University. They found that the best way to write subject lines that get opened is to show that your email contains useful information.

In a series of “think-aloud” studies, these professors asked participants to sort through emails in their own inboxes and in inboxes developed for the study.

The answer? Readers are most likely to open emails with subject lines that focus on utility, or relevance — on “information I can use to live my life better.”

So how do you write useful, helpful, relevant subject lines that get opened?

1. Lead with the benefits.

Best subject line ever? This one, from Dawn Grubb, got opened fast:

Margaritas today at 5? I’m buying

Opportunities, offers and discounts drive the most opens, according to Lyris Technologies. So focus on what’s in it for the recipient, not what’s in it for the sender.

This one, a promotional email from Portland Monthly’s Shop Talk, had me at Tim Gunn:

Talk to Tim Gunn | Free Kiehl’s Product | Bad Mall Photos

These two benefits subject lines got opened by subjects in a Nielsen Norman Group test — despite the fact that recipients didn’t know the sender (And overcoming sender unfamiliarity isn’t easy!):

Z100 Pays Your Bills!

Lonely Planet’s top 10 beaches

“When users are looking through their inboxes and dealing with vast amounts of email, any indication that a message with worth opening is helpful,” write Kim Flaherty, et al., in Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty.

This classic advice for every message you write — no surprise! — also works for subject lines: Write about the readers’ needs, not about us and our stuff.

So think benefits.

Benefits words are verbs, not nouns. And the voice of benefits is the imperative.

We learned in school that the imperative voice was the command voice, and it can be:

Go to your room! Do the dishes! Take out the trash!

But used for benefits writing, the imperative voice becomes the invitation voice:

Save money! Make money! Save time!

No wonder benefits verbs like add, open and try increase email reading, according to a study by Return Path, a global data and marketing firm. Return Path looked at more than 2 million email subscribers from 3,000 retail senders over a month last year.

(So, for that matter, do command verbs, like register, download and click.)

Phrasee adds weight to this evidence. Phrasee crunched the numbers on more than 40 billion successful (and not so successful) emails to identify what works and what does not in subject lines.

When it comes to verbs, experiential words like celebrate get top results. Commands like spend perform less effectively. (Because who wants to spend?)

And verbs like continues? Those are lackluster, too, probably because continues is a third-party verb (Wylie Communications continues to be great!)

Readers care more about themselves and their needs that about your company and its stuff. I think continue would have fared better (Continue to become a better writer every day.)

Adestra obtained similar results. Adestra analyzed more than 3 billion emails (free download) to learn which words work — and which don’t — in subject lines.

The U.K.-based email service provider found that verbs like buy and save outperformed adjectives — including free. So consider call-to-action subject lines.

So does this mean that Register! Celebrate! Save! is the best subject line ever?

Not at all.

What it does mean is that leading with a benefits-oriented verb, using the imperative voice and focusing on what the reader will get out of your email is a best practice for subject lines. Just like it is for every other thing you write.

2. Write how-to subject lines.

How-to information is the No. 2 type of content that gets retweeted, according to research by Dan Zarrella (PDF), viral marketing scientist for HubSpot. Tipsheets and service stories — aka “how to” stories — are also more likely to be read, used and acted upon.

No wonder Zarrella’s list of the 17 words that get clicked most often include tips and latest.

So find readers’ pain points and offer ways to address them. Words and phrases like how to and secrets suggest the kinds of value-added service stories that readers seek.

And, though Return Path didn’t test it, How to has always been a winner for service stories. Why not test that phrase for your subject lines, as well?

3. Use the magic word.

It’s the most retweeted word in the English language, according to viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella: You.

You is the most retweeted word in the English language.

— Dan Zarrella, viral marketing scientist

And no wonder. Starting your message with “you” pushes the benefits to the front of the sentence and focuses your message on the reader’s favorite subject.

In fact, we’ve known since 1934 that people love to read about themselves. That’s the year Ralph Tyler and Edgar Dale conducted a study that proved that second-person pronouns — you — increase reading, while first-person pronouns (I, me, we, us) reduce readability.

Now we’re learning this lesson again, this time from Return Path’s study. People are less likely to open and click through emails with first-person pronouns (I, me, our, mine) in the subject lines, according to Return Path. Researchers found that you was the only pronoun that increased email readership.

It’s about the reader! Folks, that’s 85 years of research telling us to write about the reader and the reader’s needs — in subject lines as well as everything else we write. And still, day after day, year after year, we show up at work, open our laptops, and write — once again — about us and our stuff.

So if you want to reach your reader, write about the reader. Don’t write about your organization and its products, services, programs and ideas — aka “us and our stuff.”

In subject lines, as in so much else in life, better you than we.

4. Ask a question.

When auctioneer Dick Soulis let his list know about an opportunity to help producers of a new TV series, his subject line said:

Do You Have A Piece of History?

National Geographic Channel Wants You

And Angie’s List sent asked this question in a subject line:

How long will your paint job last?

Why questions in subject lines?

When the facts are on your side, asking a question is more effective than making a statement, according to research by Daniel J. Howard and Robert E. Burnkrant at Ohio State University.

That’s because people receive statements passively. But with questions, they actively come up with their own reasons for agreeing.

And researchers at the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo found that people are more likely to click on question headlines with the word “you” than on declarative statement headlines.

Their advice: Ask intriguing questions that make people think, rather than questions with a simple yes or no answer.

What question could you ask to draw readers into your message?

5. Add a number.

Email Labs ran a split test of these three subject lines. Which do you think was most effective?

• Using Link Click-Through Tracking to Segment Your List
• 3 Tips to Improve Your Newsletter’s ROI
• Build Your List Through “Piggy-Back Marketing”

If you guessed the second, you’re right. “3 Tips” produced both higher open and click-through rates than the other two.

Why? Numerals in display copy sell because they promise quantifiable value. So think 3 Tips, 6 Ways, 7 Steps.

Oddly, odd numbers sell better than even ones. So 7 Steps is better than 10 Tips.

6. Add a sense of urgency.

Subject lines that conveyed a sense of urgency were the top performers in Return Path’s study.

So consider reminding recipients that there’s “still time” to take advantage of an offer.

7. Avoid exclamation points.

The average open rate for subject lines without exclamation points was 18% in one study; those without averages a 17% open rate.

The more exclamation points, the lower the open rate. Subject lines with two exclamation points netted 16.7% opens. Add a third, though, and the rate went down to 16.5%.

Make your subject line work.

Some 35% of email recipients use the subject line to decide whether to open a message, according to a study by DoubleClick.

Which means that this teeny-tiny piece of copy does the heavy lifting when it comes to getting your email opened and read.

To get higher open rates, make the most of your 25 to 40 characters: Show your email list that your email is relevant, valuable and useful to your readers.

Learn more digital marketing tips.

• How to write good email subject lines: These subject line strategies can result in more opened emails.
• How to organize content marketing pieces: Make this your email template.
• How to write a case study: Show what you can do by illustrating what you have done.
• Content-marketing-, social media- and blog-writing tips: Get Clicked, Read, Liked & Shared.
• Think Inside the Inbox: Learn more email marketing tips.
• Reach Readers on the Small Screen: Write to be read on mobile devices.

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What’s the secret to a successful email newsletter? Make ’em laugh; make ’em think; make ’em Skimm.

In other words, make it interesting, relevant and easy.

That’s the formula e-zine theSkimm uses. You can steal a trick from theSkimm and produce an email newsletter that’s:

1. Interesting

TheSkimm makes the news fun to read, from the subject line to the final column:

• Subject line: “Seize the Hump” for a Wednesday release
• Quote of the day: “Brad Pitt” – A nametag at an Oscars luncheon worn by none other than … Brad Pitt. You’re doing amazing, sweetie.
• Headlines: “See EU Later,” “Iowa-nna Be President,” “Whatsapp With This”
• Voice: It’s cheeky, inside-y, fun.

2. Relevant

TheSkimm offers news you can use to live your life better. That is, it delivers as much news as you need — and no more! — to be able to keep up with the conversation over lunch or cocktails.

TheSkimm best realizes this promise in its quick, breezy guides, like:

• How To Make Passive Income
• Race for the White House
• Iowa Caucuses: Everything You Need to Know

“Thing to know” also gives that inside-y, news-you-can-use-to-look-and-feel-smart tone.

3. Easy

My favorite thing about theSkimm, though, is how easy it is to read. You see that ease in the newsletter’s:

1. Positioning statement. Check out the e-zine’s No. 1 selling point

“Making it easier to live smarter”

2. Readability. TheSkimm is easy to read because of its:

• Length. You get a day’s top news and features in about 1,275 words, or a 6.5-minute read.
• Paragraph length. At about 26 words a paragraph, theSkimm looks easy to read.
• Sentence length. At about 12 words per sentence, it’s easy to understand.
• Word length. TheSkimm is also easy to process, with words averaging 4.8 characters.
• Reading ease. It’s easy to read, too, with a reading ease of 62 on a scale of 1 to 100.
• Reading grade level. Weighing in at the 7th or 8th grade level, this e-zine is accessible to most folks.

3. Skim-ability. TheSkimm is named for its skim-ability, after all! I especially like the way the e-zine breaks down the lead story.

How can you make your email newsletter interesting, relevant and easy like theSkimm?

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By Diane Owens

Did you know that the Department of Defense automatically converts employees’ emails to plain text? Disables hyperlinks? Blocks images?

That’s right. The government is serious about tightening computer security to fight cyber threats, and protect against phishing, viruses and malicious scripts in HTML code.

As a result, your carefully-designed HTML email or newsletter can become extremely hard to read for recipients who work for Uncle Sam, as well as for those who view messages on Apple watches and some other mobile devices.

All formatting is stripped — so there’s no bold, no italics, no headers, no colors, no columns, no font styles and only a few special characters. Just plain black and white text appears.

If readers can manage to find links in the sea of words, they’re forced to copy and paste each one into a browser to follow it — and URLs can sometimes be 10 lines long, like this:

To retain control of the look of the emails you send to Uncle Sam’s employees, you can:

1. Generate emails and newsletters in both HTML and plain text versions. Mailchimp, AWeber and other email service providers can use Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (known as MIME) format to automatically create an HTML version and a plain-text version of the email. The message converts to plain text for readers who specify it or are unable to view HTML emails.
2. Select a default setting that creates an archive link and causes a “Email not displaying correctly? View it in a browser” line to appear at the top of the page in the unformatted text. That allows readers to copy and paste a single URL in a browser to read the whole message online in all its HTML splendor. Formatting returns, images appear and hyperlinks work like a charm.
3. Create emails in plain text only, forgoing HTML, so all recipients will be able to read it. Most readers prefer plain text to HTML, according to a Hubspot survey.

To make plain-text emails easier to read:

• Compress links with a URL shortener like Bitly and insert the short links in the message, making it easier for the recipient to copy and paste in a browser.
• Break up large blocks of text by adding extra spacing between paragraphs and subjects throughout the document.
• Use keyboard characters that render in plain text, such as lines of asterisks or dashes, as section dividers. (Characters that don’t translate correctly in plain text include trademark, copyright and smart quotes.) Bullets won’t work either, but you can use dashes or asterisks to delineate lists of items.

Take a few minutes to view each message in plain-text format before sending it to be sure it’s as easy to read as possible. Your subscribers will thank you.
____

Sources: “Plain Text vs. HTML Emails: Which Is Better? [New Data],” Hubspot, July 27, 2015

“DoD Cybersecurity Discipline Implementation Plan” (PDF), Department of Defense, October 2015, amended February 2016

“Pentagon purges HTML from .mil emails,” FCW, Nov. 12, 2015

DIANE OWENS is a public affairs writer/editor for the U.S. Navy and a lifestyle blogger at Thoughts, Tips and Tales.

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How easy should email newsletters and e-blasts be to read? Very easy, according to a study of more than 40 million emails by Boomerang.

How easy?

Aim for the 3^rd-grade reading level. Emails written at that level got a 36% higher response than those written at a college reading level — and 17% higher response rate than those written even a high-school reading level.

Emails written at a 3^rd-grade reading level get a 53% response rate

To keep your readability high, choose short words and short sentences.

___

Source: Alex Moore, “7 Tips for Getting More Responses to Your Emails (With Data!),” Boomerang.com, Feb. 12, 2016

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The most valued email newsletters in the Nielsen Norman Group’s latest round of usability studies used these formats:

1. Headlines with short blurbs. This was, by far, the most favored format.

If you have more than 5 topics or articles, consider:

• A concise headline
• Blurbs ranging from 1 line to 2-4 sentences to even a few brief paragraphs
• Link to the full story for more information

If your email newsletter also covers more than 2 printed pages, add a table of contents.

2. Bulleted lists of information such as upcoming events, discounts and specials.

3. Single-story newsletters, such as daily meditations, articles, recipes, promotions, promotion, recipes or events. Include the full story if you use this approach.

Make them short and focused.

Note that all of these formats are short and focused. Subscribers considered newsletters with too much information or diverse content overwhelming and cluttered.

Note: Include no more than two full-length stories in your email newsletter. Keep them tight.

Be consistent.

Whatever format you choose, be consistent. Subscribers learn your format and use it to find what they’re looking for.

Subscribers also valued in email newsletters:

• Relevant, interesting information
• Clean, easy-to-use design, little clutter
• High-quality graphics and images
• Few ads

Subscribers did not value in email newsletters:

• E-commerce or sales newsletters
• Irrelevant, impersonal information
• Frilly design
• Unsolicited newsletters

What format do you use for your email newsletter? What format makes the most sense?

___

Source: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

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From the Can’t-Win-For-Losing Department: Although subscribers’ No. 1 piece of advice to email newsletter creators is to keep e-zines short, those same subscribers generally get frustrated when newsletters are too brief.

This according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s 6 rounds of email newsletter usability studies conducted over 16 years.

To make sure you’re delivering the goods in email newsletters:

1. Pay off the subject line. Don’t overpromise and underdeliver. (But don’t underdeliver and overpromise, either.)
2. Don’t omit details. Don’t make recipients search for the price, for instance.
3. Don’t make them click. Don’t use email newsletters to drive clicks. Use them to deliver value. And put that value right there, in the newsletter.
4. Don’t cut off midsentence. Subscribers see that as a way to force clicks.
5. Make links clear. If recipients must click to read, be very clear about what they’ll get if they do click. Deliver enough details to draw subscribers to your website.

So avoid Click here, Read more in email newsletters.
____

Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

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Call it the Goldilocks Conundrum: What character count is “just right” for subject line length?

If ever there were a question with an “it depends” answer, this is it. Before writing subject lines for your next email campaign, check out this research.

What can recipients see?

The number of characters displayed by devices and email clients — the weird term we use for Gmail, Apple Mail and other email service providers —varies widely. For instance, according to the Nielsen Norman Group:

• Outlook displays 78 characters on a browser at the full width of a 15″ laptop.
• Gmail on an iPhone displays 36-38 characters.
• Yahoo mail displays 38-42 characters on an iPhone before truncating the rest.

To avoid getting your subject line truncated, the folks at the Nielsen Norman Group recommend that you limit your subject line to 40 characters.

30 to 90 characters “is the dead zone, and will reduce the chances of opens and clicks in an email.”

— Adestra

But while the average desktop inbox displays about 60 characters, according to a study by Return Path, mobile devices display just 25 to 30 characters. With more than half of your audience members opening your email via smartphone, doesn’t it make sense to make this your standard?

The argument for limiting subject lines to what people can see is that you retain control of the message. After all, you don’t want your truncated subject line to say “lice” when what you wrote was “license.”

But that might be too short …

Longer subject lines perform better.

Longer subject lines boost response rates, according to Adestra, a U.K.-based email service provider. Its analysis of more than 1 billion emails showed that subject lines of:

• 90 characters and more produced the highest response rates.
• 30 characters or less also performed well.
• 30 to 90 characters “is the dead zone, and will reduce the chances of opens and clicks in an email,” write Adestra’s Parry Malm and Mark Bonner, the report authors.

Why is longer better? You can communicate more benefits with more characters, Malm and Bonner write.

Longer subject lines perform better for B2B

So, consider using 90 characters or more to communicate more benefits, Malm and Bonner suggest. More details boost subject line performance when subscribers are highly targeted, according to research by Mailchimp.)

Short subject lines perform better.

Super-short subject lines also perform well, according to Adestra. Subject lines with:

• Word counts of one or two (5 to 10 characters) are most likely to gain opens and clicks.
• More than 14 words come in second in terms of performance.
• Two to 14 words reduce clicks and opens.

Super-short headlines perform best in B2B

So consider using fewer than 30 characters for snappy subject lines promoting an offer or requesting action, Malm and Bonner suggest. But stay out of the dreary middle when you write subject lines.

Here’s more about dueling research on email subject line length.

But does it really matter?

Subject line length is just one of many factors that affects open rates. In fact, subject line length accounts for 0.1% of email open rate variance, Phrasee calculates.

Subject line length accounts for 0.1% of email open rate variance.

— Phrasee

That’s hardly a statistical significance.

Return Path had similar findings: “Overall, our research indicates that there is actually no correlation between the length of a subject line and its read rate.”

And MailChimp found that “For most users, there is no statistical link between subject line length and open rate. But for subscribers reading your campaigns on mobile devices, shorter may be better.”

Test subject lines.

The solution? Before you press Send on your next email marketing campaign, test your short subject line against a longer one. And let your recipients tell you what’s just right.

Learn more …

• What’s the best length for social media channels?
• What’s the best length for web pages?
• What’s the best length for news releases?

___

Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

“The Art And Science Of Effective Subject Lines” (PDF), Return Path, September 2015

“True or False: Shorter Subject Line will give you Better Results,” upland Adestra, modified Oct. 17, 2019

Whitney Blankenship, 7 Email myths it’s time to stop following, Learn inbound, July 1, 2019

“What are some best practices in writing email subject lines?” MailChimp, Dec. 8, 2014

Parry Malm and Mark Bonner, “And the best subject line ever is …,” Adestra, 2012

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The No. 1 advice email newsletter subscribers have for e-zine senders? Keep it short.

This according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s 6 rounds of email newsletter usability studies conducted over 16 years.

People spend just 51 seconds, on average, with an email newsletter after opening it, according to an NNG study.

“The rule for web content is to keep it short,” writes Jakob Nielsen, principal of the Nielsen Norman Group. “The rule for email content is to keep it ultra-short.”

Why so short?

Why do people spend so little time with email newsletters?

• Too many emails. Organizations and individuals send out 347.3 billion emails a day, according to Statista. That’s a lot of competition for attention in the inbox. (And that doesn’t include all of the email marketing pieces, blog posts and other content marketing pieces screaming for your readers’ attention.)
• Tiny screens. Around 81% of people use a mobile app to open their emails. And yet, Hubspot found that only 56% of companies have a marketing strategy to send mobile-friendly emails. That’s despite the fact that the tiny screen causes all kinds of usability problems.
• Audience and sender sophistication. As email newsletters have become shorter, more visual and more scannable, subscribers have learned to expect more tightly edited e-zines.

The result? Readers want less.

“Users basically said that newsletters are bad if they take too much time or demand too much work of the user,” Nielsen writes. “Newsletters are good if they … are quick reads that do not feel frivolous.”

So how long should email newsletters be?

How long should email newsletters be?

The short answer is, it depends.

The longer answer requires math. But stick with me. It’s worth it.

People read about 200 words per minute. So figure Average Reading Time, or A.R.T., a concept created by The Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark.

To figure A.R.T., multiply the number of minutes you think people will spend reading your message by 200 words per minute. The result: your recommended word count.

We know that people will spend an average of 51 seconds — let’s call it a minute — with your email newsletter. So multiply one minute by 200 words per minute to get the recommended length of your e-zine in words.

The answer: 200 words per newsletter.

Aim for 200-word email newsletters.

This recommendation is borne out by another study.

Emails of approximately 20 lines of text or about 200 words results in the highest email click-through rate for most industries, according to a study of more than 2.1 million customers by Constant Contact. (Marketing emails click-through rate for most industries requires even fewer words.)

The Constant Contact research also showed that 3 or fewer images get the highest click-throughs.

But maybe your e-zine should be longer. Or shorter. …

The more often you send your newsletter, the shorter it should be, according to Campaigner. Keep dailies to a page or less, weeklies at 5 to 7 pages or less. Monthlies can be longer, but only if you have truly fascinating information.

Too long? Send less more often.

Or maybe it should be really, really short.

The only email newsletter with the highest open rate in an NNG study was Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day. It’s just a few lines long.

That doesn’t include the subject line, but it does include the call to action.

What’s your email marketing strategy? Would your email newsletter be twice as good if it were half as long?

___

Sources:

Rebekah Carter, “Essential Email Marketing Statistics To Strengthen Your Strategy in 2023,” Ecommerce Platforms, November 15, 2022

Mike Renahan, “The Ideal Length of a Sales Email, Based on 40 Million Emails,” HubSpot, July 11, 2018

Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

Jason Fidler, “New Data: How the Amount of Text and Images Impact Email Click-Through Rates,” Constant Contact

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Email receivers have a new definition of spam. They now use the word to describe generic mass mailings not customized to them — even if they signed up for the email in the first place.

As technology and targeting capabilities evolve, subscribers are used to getting just-for-them content. They have negative opinions of generic mass mailings and unsubscribe or delete them or put them in their spam filters.

In this environment, send customized e-zines and email blasts, recommend the Nielsen Norman Group’s Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade and Jakob Nielsen, authors of Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6th Edition

Here’s how:

1. Segment your list.

“There might be a good business opportunity in creating more targeted newsletters aimed at more granular audiences,” write Flaherty et al.

So consider segmenting your list to offer more targeted, relevant e-zines and email blasts. Instead of producing an e-zine for, say, corporate communication writers, how about targeting subgroups like PR writers, email writers, web writers and social media writers? Or segment those who want to learn more about storytelling or clear and concise writing?

“Because email newsletters are highly precise one-to-one communications, it’s worth thinking of ways to serve smaller (but still substantial) subgroups within your market,” write Flaherty et al. “The more a newsletter speaks to somebody who feels overlooked elsewhere, the stronger their emotional attachment to their subscription.”

2. Ask for details during registration.

Is there a single piece of data you could get during the sign-up process that would help you deliver customized content? E-zine producers have customized content based on:

• Dates. BabyCenter asks subscribers to share their due date on the sign-up page. Then it delivers an e-zine called, “My baby this week.”
• Names. Vets and dog-food producers increase response rates by putting BoBo’s name in subject lines and email messages.
• Location. Use ZIP codes to target nearby conference attendees, for instance. Or filter last-minute flight deals by recipient’s departure airport. Or deliver tomorrow’s weather in your town.
• Gender. Parenting.com addresses subscribers as “Mom.” Why not tag subscribers by gender to avoid alienating the dads?
• Preferences. Give readers a list of topics to tick off. Then send only what they ask for.

If you ask for these details and preferences, use them. Subscribers assume that if they take the time to fill out the form, you’ll take the time to tag and target them.

And give subscribers a chance to update their preferences via a link from the e-zine itself.

3. Use purchasing, viewing history.

Subscribers are sophisticated: They know how email targeting works.

Consider this recipient of a Nike.com email blast, who wished she’d received more relevant product recommendations: “They could have directed me to styles I liked from previous purchasing habits,” she told a NNG researcher.

Take her advice. Tailor content based on previous purchases and page views.

Sender, beware. But be careful with this approach. Make sure you’re segmenting based on good data. As a longtime Blue Apron addict, I get irritated when I get yet another eblast inviting me to give their service a try.

And one Lyst shopper was surprised to receive a reminder to buy a dress she’d looked at on the website — after she had already purchased that dress and returned it because it didn’t fit.

Don’t fake it.

Don’t pretend to offer personalized content. Does your subject line say, “The latest industry news and events — curated just for you, Karelyn”?

Then the message better contain curated-just-for-you information — and not just generic spam.

Learn more about customizing email subject lines:

• Tailor, don’t personalize, email subject lines: Don’t use their names unless you also customize content
• How to tailor email subject lines: Take personalization beyond name-calling
• Don’t personalize, localize email subject lines: Avoid ‘Ann, your e-zine is here’

What techniques do you use to personalize emails?

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Sources: Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade and Jakob Nielsen; Marketing Email and Newsletter Design to Increase Conversion and Loyalty, 6^th Edition; Nielsen Norman Group, 2017

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