Know your technology
In crafting their subject lines, email marketers should also consider current spam trends and how consumers will view the emails. Spam filters mean death for many marketing messages. Lyris's Peterson advises emailers to spend some time with the spam box before they target the inbox. Of course, messages with exclamation marks and odd punctuation usually make their way to the junk folder -- right alongside adult-oriented subject lines and text touting various medications.
Arnold warns against words such as "free" and "guarantee," as well as the use of ALL CAPS and generic subject lines, such as "Hey You -- Check This Out!" That's why, Arnold says, a campaign by activist group Women Employed found success with a subject line that targeted a specific audience by category and asked that audience a specific question. The line read, "Action Pledgers: Have you done #33 yet?"
Peterson says emailers should also consider what's going on in the world at any given moment. Currently, messages related to the financial crisis in particular and the economy in general are likely to get snagged by spam filters. Even legitimate pharmaceutical sales messages should receive careful vetting, Peterson says.
"Even if you truly sell Viagra, putting that in your subject line, you're still going to end up in the spam filter," he says. Similarly, for client GameLink, which provides adult movies and videos, Lyris recommended the demure "GameLink: 3-day Secret Sale."
The way consumers view their emails should also influence the way marketers craft their messages. Although many marketing experts suggest sticking to a 30- or 40-character subject line (because those are the maximum characters displayed by common email providers such as Yahoo and Hotmail), they also point out that users of BlackBerrys and other mobile devices can only see 15 characters of a subject line. That's another reason to have your brand name up front.
VerticalResponse CEO and founder Janine Popick recommends mixing graphics and text in the body of an email because the text will show even if the email client blocks the images. For a recent campaign for Pet Camp, a pet boarding company in San Francisco, Popick advised the client to include a hosted version of its email for customers whose email client mangled the initial message.
