We spend a lot of time on email designs, content and automation flows. These are all important, but without a compelling subject line all that effort is wasted.
So we looked back at a year’s worth of data to see what we could learn from subject lines that are smashing their industry averages.
5 lessons from the data
1. A big chunk of marketers just throw a subject line out there
At the beginning of the webinar, we asked the audience how long they spend coming up with a subject line for their campaign:
While it’s nice to see half of them spending up to 5 minutes, nearly 1/3 only spend 30 seconds on the main thing that determines if their emails get opened!
2. Keep it Short…
Of the subject lines in our data set that went over 100 characters, only 1 earned a Click-Through Rate (CTR) of more than 30%. With the highest performer hitting 89%, this was a missed opportunity for their senders.
…But not too short
Both the longest and shortest subject lines we looked at scored around 5%, far short of the highest scoring.
It turns out that the optimum length is 31 to 40 characters. This is probably because in the default setup for Microsoft Outlook’s desktop app, the Preview Pane will show roughly 50 characters.
3. Pick up some Personalisation
Just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work! Of all the little tweaks we investigated, adding personalisation to a subject line results in an average of 50% higher CTR.
In addition, only 12% of our data set bothered with personalisation. So dropping your contact’s first name into a subject line provides a huge boost against most of your competitors.
4. The end of the emoji?
One of those subjects that seems to divide marketers, we had to find out what emojis can actually do for you. And it’s bad news:
Subject lines that used emojis were 31% LESS effective. And these were emojis with an obvious link to the text of the subject line (houses for real estate, stars for feedback surveys etc.)
5. On the 7th day, God created email?
As this data was taken from our B2B customers, we expected the weekend to be a quiet zone. But it turns out that Sunday is prime clicking day!
Monday as a busy day and Friday as a quiet one were no surprise, but Sunday emails performed the best of all. We didn’t gather data on the exact time that clicks were earned, but our best guess is that the audiences were tackling their inboxes on Sunday evening to set themselves up for the week ahead.
What does this mean for you?
As some of the results discussed were surprises and some were expected, we hope that your main takeaway is that you should be testing all sorts of things! Without access to the same level of cross-industry data that we have, split testing is a good place to start.
Unable to split test on your current platform? Our email tool makes it super easy; get yourself a demo by clicking here.
Reader FAQs
How can I personalize my subject lines in a way that is effective but not creepy?
“Creepy” personalisation is of course a highly subjective thing. The safest way to proceed is to focus on things your audience has told you directly, or that you find in places that are relevant to your interactions. If a salesy email referenced news from Spotler Group, I’m fine. If they mention the Harlequins rugby match I went to on my day off, that starts being creepy.
What other factors besides character count and emojis can affect the click-through rate of subject lines?
We’ve chosen to highlight the factors which make the biggest difference, as a springboard for you to try your own experiments.
As part of the data, we also checked for a seasonal impact. We saw a dip in performance in June and November, but only small variations among the other months.
Enough of our dataset included the sender’s company name to make it worth a look. There was a small positive effect from doing so (20.15% CTR vs 18.58%). So if you’re looking for a small-scale test to run, this might be for you.
Are there any other days of the week that are good for sending emails besides Sundays?
Among weekdays, Monday is the clear leader, performing twice as well on CTR as Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. If you spend your Monday organising your inbox for a productive week, you’re clearly not alone!
