Subject line – does size really matter?

TAGS: Email marketing | Subject lines

Following on from her article on “The importance of your email subject line” Louise James, Client Service Manager at Silverbean, discusses the impact the length of your subject line can have on your email marketing campaign.

It’s the first impression we all want to get right when executing an email marketing campaign – your subject line can make or break the success of your communication. To open or not to open…the answer we all want a resounding “yes” to. But what impact could the length of your subject line have on your open rates?

Stick to the rules?

If you are a stickler for rules and want to keep within the industry standard, then around 30-40 characters is the accepted maximum length for a subject line.

But there is an argument to say that you should not compromise the message you are trying to convey to your audience for the sake of “sticking to the rules”. You need to keep to as few characters as possible, whilst still ensuring you are getting your message across – and of course encouraging that open action!

Of course, you also have to bear in mind that some email clients do limit the amount of characters displayed in the subject line field.

Short & sweet vs Long & informative

I manage the email marketing campaign for Netto here at Silverbean, and have to constantly monitor the impact the subject lines used on their twice weekly newsletter communications – and for that reason I have really got under the skin of their database (I will go into this in more detail later!).

Initially we started out with a very simple, short subject line:

  But more recently, we moved towards a more engaging subject line detailing some of the offers available within the newsletter. However, given the volume of weekly promotions that the client has on offer, it’s often a challenging task to convey a short succinct message to our recipients, whilst also encouraging them to open the email to view more.

As an example, we recently ran with the following subject line.

Now, if we were to look at this email following “the rule book” – it shouldn’t really work! It’s long…we have exclamation marks…we have numbers…and we even have the word “free” contained within. But it did work – with an 18% uplift in open rates compared to the short subject line detailed above.

My advice

I believe that if you approach your subject line in the correct manner – size really doesn’t matter. Stick to these general rules when drafting your subject line:

1. When opting for a longer subject line, load the front with the most important information you wish to convey – as mentioned above, some email clients cut your subject line off in the preview area at around 40 characters, so you still need to make sure your key offers and promotions are instantly visible to your recipients.

2. Do try to keep the subject line as short as you possibly can – use longer subject lines when there is a strong persuasive reason to do so – not just to “pad things out”.

3. TEST! As mentioned above, you need to really get under the skin of the majority of your recipient database…what do they like, what turns them off? And then stick to what you know! Your own database may have recoiled at the subject line sent to the Netto newsletter recipient list above – they may have loved it! But how do you know if you don’t try these things out – it’s the only way to get to know your audience!

4. Encourage the “add to your safelist” action. In an ideal world, your entire database would add you to their safe list/address book – you wouldn’t therefore have to worry about spam filters picking up on the length of your subject and the contents within. In reality, you need to encourage this action! Ask your recipients to add your email address to their safe list BEFORE you send them their first email – highlight it on your sign up page with a direct link through to a page which offers a step by step process on how to do this in the various email service providers. And of course follow this up by including the request in all of your subsequent email communications.

Louise James is Client Services Manager at Silverbean. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how Silverbean can help you achieve your marketing objectives through email marketing; please contact our resident email marketing services expert using one of the following.

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