E-mail marketing can be a very powerful tool. According to a recent MarketingProfs panel, people who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people that do not receive email offers. However, the vast majority of emails go unread. Estimates vary throughout the industry, but most pros agree that it’s roughly only one out of every five email messages that gets opened.

What makes a customer read one email and ignore another? The answer is often the subject line. More than a third of readers open an email based on the subject line alone. With this in mind, business owners often try to come up with clever, compelling subject lines for their email marketing. In other instances, particularly when companies use a regular email newsletter to reach out to their clientele, the subject line is used to provide a quick snapshot view of the email’s contents.

This is a good idea, but an even better idea is to make double-checking your subject lines before you hit send a best practice your company follows. Something as simple as reading your subject line aloud can help you discover that what you said isn’t exactly what you meant.

Double Check Your Subject Lines

We saw a recent example of this in an email from PSN ENews. The subject line read “Legendary Engineer Mike Shipley Passes; Lectrosonics Gets Revenge.” In actuality, these two stories aren’t related to each other at all; one mourns the demise of an industry giant while the other is a tale of corporate maneuvering. However, taken together, the subject line reads like a soap opera full of intrigue. Clearly not what was intended!

Double checking your subject lines is also an opportunity to make sure that everything is spelled correctly. Grammar matters, even in digital communication! Remember, your customers judge you at every contact point. If they feel like you’re being sloppy in your marketing efforts, they will punish you by taking their business elsewhere.

Keeping track of all of the details of marketing your small business can seem like an overwhelming task. It is daunting to maintain continual oversight of the thousands of small touches that determine how your business is seen online. If you’d like help in making sure your company is always putting its best foot forward, give us a call. We’re here to help.