Trust your instinct! Unless your instinct is different than your boss’s instinct.
Subject lines are the front line of interaction with your customers and your brand. It’s also the only part of the email that everyone will see. So, the importance of a subject line can’t be overstated.
As the person responsible for writing or managing the team that writes the subject lines, a subject line needs to accomplish these three things…
1) Drive Customer Action
Emails, when used as a marketing tool are implemented to ultimately encourage the customer to take a desired action. It could be simply to inform them, or it could be to sell thousands of dollars worth of product. Either way, the hope is that your customer takes the next step to engage with your brand.
Every email should orient around that goal.
Your call to action should orient around that goal.
Your creative should orient around that goal.
Your landing pages should orient around that goal.
And of course, so should your subject lines!
So, what desired action is the hope of your subject line? That’s right… to open the email. If you can’t get them to do that, you’ll always be leaving money on the table.
2) Sound On Brand
Your brand isn’t simply the products or services you sell. Your brand is the culmination of what you’ve done to date, but more importantly, what you promise to do in the future. So, when you sit down to write a subject line, a large emphasis should on sounding like what your brand is currently or what you want your brand to become.
For example, if your brand is built on providing low-cost products to your customers, like Family Dollar, you wouldn’t want to spend a ton of subject line real estate talking about the quality of an expensive item. Conversely, you don’t see Apple screaming about their 75% OFF iPads.
I’m only scratching the surface of branding, but the number one reason it’s important to stick with subject lines that are on brand is to maintain and build the trust of your customer. If you venture too far off brand, you will erode the trust of your customers.
You should have a clearly defined brand promise and brand voice before you just start screaming about 75% OFF products.
3) Make Your Bosses Happy
People who work for research firms or an agency team who have never worked on the client-side of the world can’t understand the politics involved in subject line writing. I’ve been at smaller companies where the CEO doesn’t care about the subject line and I’ve worked for publicly held companies where the CEO has veto power and reviews 400+ emails and subject lines per year.
The challenge that faces the email team isn’t writing an effective subject line or writing a subject line that matches the brand voice. More often than not, our problem is that someone higher up the food chain simply doesn’t like the subject lines we’ve written. If you write an effective subject line that’s on brand, but your boss doesn’t like it… good for you! If you always ignore your boss without supporting data, you’ll eventually find yourself looking for a job.
So, the next time you sit down to write a subject line, think about your brand voice, driving customers towards your desired outcome, and of course, making your boss happy (or convincing him or her you know what you’re doing with some A/B test results.
In case you missed it, there’s a simple Venn diagram to help you visualize the possible outcomes.
