8 Ways To Write Email Subject Lines This Holiday Season

The holiday season is approaching fast and you probably have already started thinking of subject lines to use in end-of-year campaigns. How do you make emails stand-out in your customer’s inbox? Subject line is as important as the email itself, so planning ahead it the right thing to do.

Businesses send up to 15% more emails during winter holidays compared to other seasons. However the open rate is 14.6% lower during the holidays. No wonder customers are reluctant to check their emails when they are busy standing in those long store line ups.

Related: How to Emotionally Hook Visitors to Stay on Your Website Longer

With this in mind, as an email marketer you have to get really creative to stand out and outperform the long list of holiday offers in the inbox. Email subject lines are top of the funnel for email marketing. They are the first step to increasing click through rates and conversions. Here we have some tips and tricks that will inspire you write highly engaging subject lines.

Personalize Subject Lines

Personalized subject lines generate up to 50% more open rates than their generic counterparts. Unfortunately only 2% of email marketers use this factor to their advantage. Keep in mind that personalization is not only referred to using customer’s name and last name. Loyalty program, browsing and purchase history can all be used to write personalized email subject lines.

Use Triggers Effectively

Trigger email subject lines can double your open rates. The right trigger emails can send a lot of customers your way if you do it right. Firstly, be concise. The shorter the trigger subject line – the better. Secondly, use your best revenue-generating campaigns to your advantage. For instance, if the customer has previously subscribed to your branded emails, you can write “Welcome to ‘brand name’” with some kind of special offer in the pre-header.

Keep It Short

While it might seem like a good idea to use up every character of your subject line limit, numerous research shows that concise subject lines generate much higher open rates. Subject lines under 21 characters generate up to 30% higher open rates.However more than 74% contain between 21 and 60 characters although they have the lowest open rates.

However if you have your mind set on a long subject line, make sure that it is longer than 60 characters. Surprisingly, these long subject lines have at least 5% higher open rate than those between 21 to 60 characters. To entice those who use mobile phones to read the emails, ensure that you include enough information at the beginning of your subject line.

Create Sense of Urgency

Most people do not like missing out on something important. Therefore urgency can make your customers act. Using sense of urgency in email subject line has shown 15% increase in open rates. For example sending an email that stresses last chance to buy seats at the concert or couple of hours to get 50% discount will entice people to get the deal.

Create Curiosity

Information gap makes humans curious. And curiosity entices them to act as it cognitively creates a feeling of deprivation. When you create information gap for your subscribers it makes them curious to see what is hiding inside that email. It will certainly increase open rates. Ensure that the email does not disappoint. After all the goal is to get to the bottom of the funnel and increase click through rates.

For example “Find Out How To Increase Email Open Rate By X%” would be very enticing when targeted at the right audience.

Year In Review

Hand-pick your best-selling items, articles, reviews, top products from the previous year. It is a nice year-end email which shows your customers that you’ve picked the best for them. This triggers the right response “avoid pain, seek pleasure”. When you receive an email with subject line “Best Email Marketing Campaigns 2016”, it is very unlikely that you will miss out.

Start Preparing Early

Festive season is a busy time of the year, so start getting ready and planning your best strategies well in advance. This will allow you to build the most outstanding campaigns during the rush season.

Do Not Forget The Basics

End-of-year is the best time to wrap up not only your campaigns, but also your email lists. Keeping your lists clean allows you to reduce your email bounces, increase deliverability rates and steer clear of spam filter. Avoiding problematic opt-in sources is the best way to keep your lists clean. However even if you use opt-in best practices, list cleaning will help you get rid of stale email addresses.