Oh, those darling emojis: red heart, face with tears of joy, naughty eggplant. Surely they have a use in subject lines for marketing emails.

Indeed, they do, say the conservative folks at the Nielsen Norman Group.

They say emojis in subject lines can:

• Draw attention to your message in a crowded inbox
• Help communicate the topic of your email
• Add emotion and context to a message
• Even replace words — a heart for love,for instance — if used carefully

But beware. Emojis:

• Can be hard to distinguish on a desktop — let alone smartphone — screen
• May not be correctly displayed across all email clients, browsers and devices
• Might confuse people unless you choose only very familiar emojis
• Might be seen as mass mail and “marketese”

Still, used carefully — and with the blessings of the NNG researchers — why not give them a go? At least A/B test emojis and find out whether they work for you.

ALL CAPS: Use it? Or lose it?

WE THOUGHT IT WAS YELLING, BUT … capitalized subject lines get opened significantly more often than upper and lower case, according to a study by MailChimp.

A couple of caveats:

• Personalizing? Avoid all caps for names. Recipients are especially sensitive to seeing their name in all-caps in a subject line, especially when the rest of the subject line is in sentence case or title case, according to the Nielsen Norman Group. Instead, capitalize the first letter of the recipient’s name only.
• Don’t be afraid to use questions in your subject lines. But skip exclamation points.
• Be careful. MailChimp is an outlier with this advice. Proceed with caution. A/B test.

___

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

“Subject Line Data: Choose Your Words Wisely,” Mailchimp, Nov. 13, 2013

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Nobody wants to miss out: Adding a sense of urgency to your subject lines is one of the best ways to get recipients to read your email.

Or so conclude four organizations that study the science of getting your emails opened, clicked and read.

1. Urgency No. 1.

Urgency headed the list of the most effective subject lines approaches in a study by Return Path, a global data and marketing firm. Return Path analyzed 9 million subject lines sent to 2 million subscribers.

Still time was the best performing phrase in the Return Path study. It got the email read an average of 34% of the time and scored a keyword influence on read rate of 15.54.

But not all “urgent” words and phrases fared so well:

2. Avoid daily urgent emergencies.

Highlighting a sense of urgency can drive people to act, says Phrasee, a London firm that uses artificial intelligence to optimize subject lines.

Phrases like sale starts, back in stock and sale now can increase opens, click throughs and click to open rates.

But pushing deadlines and time limits can also get old fast. Some products seem to be perpetually on a limited-time sale. Readers become numb to those repeated urgent offers.

Bottom line: Find words that create a sense of urgency, but that aren’t boring.

3. I love you, Tomorrow.

Tomorrow increased open rates by 10%, found HubSpot in a survey of 6 million emails. But quick  did not affect opens.

And subject lines including tomorrow outperformed those including a day of the week by 31%, according to Worldata Research.

Choose concrete numbers and times: Pay last year’s fees for next year’s workshops: Book by 12/31.

4. Be creative.

Don’t just pick the words on Return Path’s list. I loved a subject line from Carol Tuttle that said This. Is. It. Final day for DYT jewelry!

5. Urgent sells.

The words urgent, breaking, important and alert increase open rates, according to an analysis by Mail Chimp. The king of mass emailers studied 24 billion emails with subject lines composed of 22,000 distinct words.

Create a sense of urgency.

Bottom line: Words stressing time prod people to open emails.

So:

1. Use words that imply urgency: urgent, breaking, important, alert, tomorrow, now.
2. Add deadlines, cutoff dates and other timely detailsthat move people to act now. These techniques can nudge your readers to open your email message today instead of leaving it languishing in the inbox.
3. Choose concrete numbers and times: Pay last year’s fees for next year’s workshops: Book by 12/31.

Remember, though, your email really needs to be urgent. Don’t oversell. If you say this is the last time, it had better really be the last time.

___

Sources:

“The Art and Science of Effective Subject Lines,” Return Path, Apr. 2015

“Email subject lines that sell,” Phrasee, Apr. 2015

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What makes one email campaign generate an amazing 93% open rate, while another languishes at a dismal 0.5%?

Ask the researchers at MailChimp, an email service provider. They analyzed open rates for more than 200 million emails.

Make emails “short, descriptive and provide the reader with a reason to explore your message further.”

— MailChimp

“The best email subject lines are short, descriptive and provide the reader with a reason to explore your message further,” write the researchers. “Splashy or cheesy phrases more often cause your email to be ignored rather than make them stand out.”

A peek inside MailChimp’s top 5 subject lines all clearly state what’s inside the message.

What do recipients really want?

Subject lines help the folks on your email list decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze — or the e-zine is worth the open. To increase your open rates, write good email subject lines that:

1. Tell, don’t tease.

Don’t make your subject line a teaser to get recipients to open the message. Instead, make your subject lines clear, like these, suggest the folks at the Nielsen Norman Group:

dyad: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

— Word of the Day

Term Loans — Rates as low as 5.5%

— Commerce Bank

NFL Postseason Ticket On-Sale Information

— Kansas City Chiefs

“It might be tempting to think that a generic subject line will entice users to open a message to see its content. After all, if users can see the content in the subject line and determine they’re not interested, they won’t open the message,” writes Janelle Estes, senior user experience specialist at the Nielsen Norman Group.

“It’s much better to inform the user and let them decide than to require them to open a message to find out that they’re not interested in it. Many people may not bother at all and simply delete it instead.”

2. Consider your subject line a promise, and keep it.

If your subject line is Get to know Karelyn Lambert, then your content better not be “shop her favorites” with a link to all of your products. (Maybe make that a call to action or next steps, instead.)

3. Don’t over-deliver.

If you promise targeted content, recipients expect focused, simple content — not sprawling lists of everything including the kitchen sink.

“Users expected the payoff to be high when they clicked to view any email,” write Kim Flaherty, Amy Schade, and Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group.

“They were satisfied when their expectations were sufficiently met with content that delivered on the promise that the subject line made. However, they were increasingly frustrated when content was only loosely related, or forced them to go to the site to get the information advertised in the subject line with many users stating that they felt mislead by the email.”

And when that happens, your emails are likely to wind up in recipients spam folders.

Avoid generic email newsletter subject lines.

Generic subject lines — “Newsletter name” — are more likely to be deleted than opened. So says usability guru Jakob Nielsen. So says MailChimp.

Why avoid generic subject lines? Repeating subject lines:

1. Reduces email open rates.

“It’s obvious that if you send the same campaign over and over again (such as reminders for an event), your open rates will decline with each subsequent campaign,” write the experts at MailChimp.

How much should you expect it to decline? In one study, MailChimp tracked the results of these similar event reminders:

• 1st email: Funk n Sandi @ The Roxy on 3 March — 8% open rate
• 2nd: Funk ‘n’ Sandi @ The Roxy on 3 March — 6.3%
• 3rd: This Sat 3 Feb — Funk n Sandi @ The Roxy — 5.1%
• 4th: Don’t forget — Funk ‘n’ Sandi this Sat 3 Mar!— 3.5%

2. Makes your message hard to store.

I save my e-zines for reading on planes. I’ll bet you save yours for a more convenient time, too.

The problem with generic subject lines is that they’re hard to store. When I save one with a generic subject line to my “reads” file, I have to rewrite the subject line:

• Instapaper
• Instapaper-2
• Instapaper-3
• Instapaper-4
• Instapaper-5

3. Makes your message hard to find.

Oh, my God! An article in one of your e-zines has changed my life. I want to be able to refer to it often and share it with everyone I know.

But where is it? Will I find it in:

• HubSpot Blog, Opinion
• HubSpot Blog, Opinion-2
• HubSpot Blog, Opinion-3
• HubSpot Blog, Opinion-4
• HubSpot Blog, Opinion-5

How to write specific subject lines

So how can you make your subject lines less generic?

1. Tell the story.

For years, the folks at Daily Puppy sent out this subject line … every … day:

The DailyPuppy | Pictures of Puppies

I like pictures of puppies as much as the next gal, but I’m not sure I’d open that after, say, the 100th day. But Daily Puppy recently changed its subject lines to include the puppy’s name and breed. Who wouldn’t want to:

Meet Pistachio the English Bulldog!

Don’t write e-zine subject lines like this:

April news from Litmus

New Post is up on That’s Not My Age

What’s new in MailChimp: April 2018

Instead, treat your subject lines as headlines. Summarize your lead article in subject lines like these:

5 Types of E-Commerce Shoppers

— Nielsen Norman Group

Police officer’s good deed draws praise on Facebook

— SmartBrief on Social Business

The Interpreter: How America came to love small wars

— The New York Times

Voter registration + turnout = historic midterm election

— Indivisible

Starbucks will close 8,000 locations for racial bias training

— Eater

2. Don’t repeat the sender in the subject line.

They’ve already seen your From line. Avoid wasting any of your 25-40 characters repeating that information.

Instead of …

Alan Weiss | Unique development from Alan Weiss

… how about delivering some details about the development?

Alan Weiss | Multiply your income with new classes

Instead of …

SEO Tips List | [SEO-Tips] Tomorrow’s SEMRush Meetup

… how about delivering some details about the development?

SEO Tips List | Save $50 on tomorrow’s SEMRush Meetup

3. Drop the date.

Most email clients display this information near the subject line. (Not that recipients are scanning your subject line for calendar information.)

Plus: Don’t let dreary details like dates get in the way of the information that actually drives opens: the contents of your e-zine or newsletter.

Overcome sender unfamiliarity.

While generic subject lines don’t get clicked, enticing ones drew them into the email — even when they weren’t familiar with the senders. (And overcoming sender unfamiliarity isn’t easy.)

“When users are looking through their inboxes and dealing with vast amounts of email, any indication that a message is worth opening is helpful,” Nielsen writes.

Like this one, from Roger Dooley:

Simple Hacks to Develop a Magnetic Memory, more

Want to get opened? Before sending an email, make sure your subject line is clear and easy to understand — and change them up.

Learn more

• How to add a sense of urgency to email subject lines
• How to write a recognizable ‘from’ (email address) line
• Don’t be afraid to use questions in subject lines. But skip exclamation points.
• Tips for writing effective social media, blog posts, content marketing pieces
• Learn to get read on mobile devices.

___

Sources: “Best Practices for Email Subject Lines,” MailChimp, June 20, 2018

Janelle Estes, “Email Subject Lines: 5 Tips to Attract Readers,” Nielsen Norman Group, May 4, 2014

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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When a Toyota dealership wrapped up its car-maintenance-and-new-models e-zine with information about getting more protein into your diet, subscribers were surprised.

They’d signed up for the car information, but not the diet advice. And since when was their dealer an expert in nutrition?

That’s one of the most interesting findings among the Nielsen Norman Group’s 199 usability guidelines for e-zines and email blasts:

Focus your e-zine. Don’t give subscribers any extra bonus material. They don’t want it.

Indeed, the most highly rated newsletters in NNG’s usability studies all contained highly focused content with no extraneous information. Users don’t want extraneous irrelevant information to get in the way of relevant, targeted information they can use.

To give subscribers what they’re looking for:

1. Focus on your area of expertise.

If you’re sending out a car dealership e-zine, tell me about cars. I don’t want to hear about your grandchildren, your vacations or your high-protein diet.

2. Cover a single topic.

Subscribers in Nielsen Norman Group studies often felt overwhelmed by the number of topics in email newsletters. They preferred newsletters to focus on one story or offer short, focused snippets of information on each topic.

“There’s pretty much a ‘don’t waste my time’ phenomenon at play,” write the Nielsen Norman Group researchers. “If newsletters … overloaded a message with unrelated topics they were generally disliked by recipients.”

3. Hew to the subject line.

ClimateNexus.org sent out an e-zine with the subject line: “Planet’s Cool New Agreement, Navy’s Biggest RE Buy, and More.”

With an emphasis on and More: The message itself included links to 105 stories.

“The newsletter contained a number of news stories that were not encompassed by the subject,” a subscriber kvetched to NNG researchers. “The amount of content was overwhelming. I would prefer a shorter, more curated list. I feel like the subject line opens up the door for them to take the email anywhere.”

So drop the and more. E-zine subscribers want relevant, targeted information wrapped up in a pithy subject line. If a story doesn’t hew to that subject line, take it out.

And if a quote doesn’t hew to that subject line? Take it out.

When The New York City Parks Daily Plant newsletter delivered a Quote of the Day that was unrelated to the rest of the e-zine’s stories, one subscriber grumbled to NNG researchers, “‘Quote of the Day’? Is that supposed to relate to the information in the newsletter?”

Yes. That’s supposed to relate to the information in the newsletter. So make sure it does. Choose stories — and quotes — only if they hew to the subject line.

4. Be focused … but not too focused.

Are you so focused that some of your subscribers feel left out? Even for a single issue?

As you remain focused, don’t get so segmented that subscribers question whether your newsletter is for them. Examples from NNG research:

• One subscriber felt alienated by a grocery store newsletter, which, he felt, focused on mothers instead of young men. “We eat too, you know!” he told NNG researchers.
• A Parenting.com e-zine greeted subscribers, “Dear Mom” — leaving out the fathers who had also subscribed.
• When a BNET.com newsletter, Business Tools for Busy Leaders, covered hiring practices and other HR topics in one issue, some subscribers felt it was not aimed at a general business audience.
• A single special issue about California wine made subscribers to a WineLoversPage.com e-zine think the newsletter focused exclusively on California.

Solutions:

1. Indicate your broader focus in each issue: Include next week’s topic in one line at the bottom on the message, for instance, or quick images and links to the last three topics.
2. Consider offering segmented e-zines to California wine lovers or HR managers.
3. Mostly, though, counsel the folks at the Nielsen Norman Group: “Know who your audience is and work to create well balanced content in each edition to satisfy your entire customer base.”

5. Offer focused … variety.

While subscribers demand focus, they don’t want to be bored. And while it makes no sense to try to offer something for everyone, you might reach more people with a little extra variety.

So steal a tip from History.com’s This Day In History e-zine. It focuses on one historical item in each issue. But it also provides links to other several events that occurred on the same day.

That’s variety. And focus.

Amen.

Learn more about focus.

What techniques do you use to focus your e-zines?

___

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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