The Huge Importance of The Subject Line

The Huge Importance of The Subject Line

Having a well thought out and good subject line for your email can be the difference between it being opened, being spammed, being left to sit in an inbox for a few days and it being deleted instantly by your receivers.

Length

A good subject line should consist of around 40 characters, and should be able to make your email stand out amongst all of the others it’s sat next to in the inbox. It goes without saying that the subject line needs to be relevant to your content, and needs to portray the main importance of the email message.

Test

Make sure you test your email subject line, especially to check for spamming, you can use a spam checker tool to do this, or just send it around internally and ensure everyone receives it successfully.

Repetition

Don’t repeat yourself by putting your company name in the subject line if this is already in the ‘from’ name. This will just waste space and will not encourage people to open it. Research shows that readers look at the from line and then the subject line, so you also have to make sure you have a recognisable ‘from’ address.

You can have a look through previous campaigns and newsletters and correlate subject lines with open and click rates and analyse this for yourself. You should also look at which content is most popular, which assets were download most often and which inclusions gained the most clicks. This analysis should drive your organisations content selection and show you what is most relevant and useful to recipients.

Above all don’t mislead people in your subject line, don’t stretch the truth or promise more than you can deliver. This will mean that readers won’t trust you and will result in unsubscribes, spam reports and unhappy recipients.

Amie Lovell

Meet Amie, Marketing Manager here at Inbox. She looks after everything from our content and blog articles to newsletters and social. Her passion is delivering engaging content that resonates with our target audience while promoting thought leadership, to drive brand awareness and trust in what we do.
Want access to the latest B2B insights?

Our InboxInsider provides a monthly round-up of the latest whitepapers and reports, trending intent tags, best-performing subject lines, and more.

Latest blogs

Latest blog posts