E-mailing: 5 recommendations for writing mail headers
Subject of the letters is the first thing that your recipients see in their mailboxes. There are two criteria with which the recipient defines to open it or not: who is the sender and what is its subject ( 'header' is more appropriate here, since we are talking about commercial mailing).
We are even prepared to say that writing of the title, selection of words and punctuation in it will take twice as much time than writing of the actual message body.
The main purpose of a title is not to sell, but make, yes, it is to make the recipient to open the email. We will talk later how to create a selling letter. And now look at five tips that can be used for the letter header writing. All of them are aimed at increasing the attractiveness of the text for the recipient and, therefore, to predispose him to the opening, reading and, it is possible, committing the action.
1. The title should be specific
There are two types of e-mails: selling and informative.
Doing commercial mailing, it is important to have a clear idea of each company (person), to which you send a letter. The style of writing depends on it. Also, when you are working on the title, you are absolutely clear about the purpose of the letter.
Newsletters often have titles that contain the words "recall", "present", "innovation" and so on. Topics of such letters immediately provoke us to move them to the bin.
The best approach to creating selling letters, as a rule, is to specify it. Let customers know immediately what you offer them to read. On the one hand, this method may seem counterproductive, but allowing the recipient to navigate in the contents of the letter, you increase the CTR. Firstly, as a result you save time of the recipient, secondly, such feelings as irritation or resentment will be short-lived and will not cause a total lack of confidence in your brand, and thirdly, if the person currently does not need your proposed product, you will not impose it by means of letters.
Consider the example of official newsletters in social networks. Subject of such messages always makes it clear what happened and why the system decided to notify you.
Many experts on the mailing speak of "creativity", "hooking" of message headers. So, as it turned out, the best "hooking" headline is the question. The question excites curiosity, requires clarification and opening of the letter. For example, what actions will the recipient of the letter with the topic "May, 12 is Mother's Day" make? Will put a reminder? Will call or take a trip? Another thing will be, if the title is formulated in the form of a question: "And have you prepared a gift to Mother's Day?" This letter's theme will make him: a) consider, when Mother's Day is; b) open the email to find out the answer to this question (and not because he did not prepare a gift). After the letter is opened, the header performed its function.
2. Personalization, localization and targeted address
Letters "to all" is the thing of the past now. But appeal in the style of "John, Good day!" also became a certain cliché. Although this applies more to the body of the letter than to the title, but in recent times companies prefer to insert the recipient's name in the headline. This does not mean that we should completely abandon the personalization of our letters. It can manifest itself in many forms: the mention of the company name, position, name and patronymic, the mention of friends (for social networks), and so on.
Companies that provide services for booking and purchasing of tickets or hotels, indicate destinations and accommodation in the subject header. This is an example of localization.
Sending out invitations specifying the subject may be an example of a targeted address: "Webinar on Aweb: how not to over-optimize a website?"
Some tips:
- use of name and patronymic is infrequently practiced. But in business correspondence, as a rule, just such a bundle is used. This technique is used in commercial mailing also: older people are more loyal when they were treated with respect;
- you should take into account the recipient's location, and the time difference, season, climatic conditions, cultural traditions;
- gender of the recipient. Gender equality does not mean that you can apply to all subscribers "Dear".
3. Grow your capital and do not write out of nowhere
The use of answering machines and robots for mailing is the abroad boundary of the life cycle of communication with the client. The use of personally-work Mailboxes allows the subscriber to identify you and accumulate social capital. Robot-mailing, even with the presence of "humanity" attributes, does not give a positive effect, especially with a series of letters and the responses.
Accordingly, the theme of letters must not contain words, created by a robot, or which can be attributed to the machine. Separately we draw attention to the fact that you should not use the word «Re:» with the purpose to simulate the response. For example, it so happened that you had to use a mailing program or an answering machine, which do not involve dialogue. Say about it and leave the email address through which the person can contact the manager.
Most companies do every e-mailing one time, at the same time limiting the number of outgoing messages, fearing customer irritation. If you spend a lot of time writing a letter, and it's really helpful to your subscribers do not need to be afraid of it.
4. Test, try, experiment with a header length
There is a stereotype that the length of the message header affects readability. It is a stereotype that was debunked with many examples of successful mailings. Mailchimp recently published statistics relating to the length of the header, which discloses the truth: there is no hard and fast rules regulating the length of the subject line. This should vary depending on your needs. At the same time it will be a shame if the main message of your threads will be hidden or cut off by the mail client.
To determine the optimal size of message subjects, use the A / B-test. It's the only way when you will be able to find a middle ground.
5. Not only the message header is important.
We are talking about e-mail clients. Why is it important to know how e-mail clients display the letters?
You need to make efforts not only to produce the correct title, but also to select the text for a short preview of.
Three tips:
- Include your company name in the "From": instead of the classic "John Doe" you can be use "John from the Company." Mention of your company name will make your brand recognizable and increase its credibility. In addition, it saves the subscribes from divination, who "John Doe" is.
- Remove unnecessary links from the top of the letter. Many standard templates of letters contain optional links, such as "open in browser", and others. These elements need to be moved on or placed in the end of the letter, because they "eat" space for important information. If your letter is important and useful, then the recipient opens it, reads, and will choose the display mode.
- Do not be carried away by the invention of the "creative" title. Use the H1 tag or highlight the text in the beginning of the e-mail to formulate the basic idea.
If after reading these five recommendations you have any ideas on how you can still optimize headers, we propose to discuss them.