In emailing, creating a good subject line is essential since it is your main lever to encourage Internet users to open your message. This is precisely why your subject must be written carefully and carefully. You must both succeed in arousing the interest of your readers and also in reassuring them about your level of expertise regarding the issue addressed in your email. Be aware, however, that there are constraints when writing your subject if you want optimal performance, since the number of words is extremely limited. This is where your biggest challenge lies: you must succeed in being concise and simple.

Good reading.

Here is the summary of our file dedicated to the subject: 

1. The subject is essential for your email,
2. Structure is important for your object,
3. Be careful not to fall into spam,
4. Here are some examples of objects,
5. Do some testing.

Why is the subject matter important in mailing?

To succeed in your email marketing or your newsletter, you must succeed in writing a subject that makes your readers want to open your email. Also, it is essentially your subject line that helps improve your open rate. However, before going into more detail, you should know that an Internet user spends around fifteen seconds reading an email. This means that you must be concise in your writing and get to the point, otherwise you will not be read.

Make your readers want to read your message 

To begin this file, you must know that the subject is essential if you want to succeed in your email campaign. Indeed, you must succeed in making your readers want to open the message you have just sent them, once it has arrived in their inbox. Otherwise, understand that all your design and writing efforts will go to waste. And precisely, to encourage them to read your message, the subject is essential since it is the first element that your Internet users will see when receiving your email.  

Improve your open rate

To know if your campaign is a success or not, the best way is to analyze your statistics. When it comes to the subject of your email, the main indicator to observe is the open rate. The purpose of this opening rate is to know if you have succeeded in making your readers want to read the message sent. Obviously, this mainly involves writing a good subject. To calculate the open rate, you must divide the number of times your email has been opened by your recipients by the number of emails sent. Remember to multiply the result obtained by 100, in order to make a percentage.  

Configure your sender address 

However, to improve your open rate you must also correctly configure your sender address. The sender address is simply the email address that appears in your Internet users' inbox, right next to your subject. To configure this address, nothing very complicated since it is easily and simply customizable in most modern email software.

Here's how to configure your sender address in the Brevo email software.

How to structure your email subject line?

To have a good chance of writing an almost perfect subject for each of your campaigns, we advise you to follow a structure composed of two parts: start by announcing the theme covered then ask your readers a question. Next, be careful about the length of your object. Indeed, if your subject is too long, it is not fully displayed in the inbox of your Internet users, which is very damaging for you.

A two-part structure

To succeed with your object, here is the structure that we advise you to apply. This structure is made up of two complementary parts:  

1. First start by announcing the theme you are addressing in your email. To do this, simply write this theme in a few words. Be careful, remember that your object should not be too long.
2. Next, we advise you to ask a question. This question should be relevant to your readers. This means that you must show empathy in order to find a question that is both interesting for your Internet users and which you are able to answer thanks to your products or thanks to your services.

Be careful not to make it too long

For your object to be a real success, it must obviously be entirely readable by your Internet users. However, be aware that the maximum number of characters displayed depends on the messaging system used by your recipients. This is why we have collected the maximum limits for the most used messaging services. Here they are :  

• Gmail: 77 characters,
• Outlook: 60 characters,
• LaPoste: 45 characters,
• Yahoo: 77 characters,
• Orange: 30 characters.

Overall, we see that the maximum number of characters is around fifty. Concretely, we therefore advise you to write an object that does not exceed 50 characters so that it is perfectly readable.

Beware of spam

What could be more painful for a communicator than sending an email campaign to all its recipients and realizing that this message has been systematically classified in the spam folder? It is precisely to avoid falling into spam that we draw your attention to special characters, words and even smileys that should not be integrated into your objects.

Words to ban

To avoid ending up in spam, you must avoid several types of words in your subject:

• Money specific words like promotion, free, money back, gift, reward, coupon, special offer, etc.
• Words that lead to suspicious behavior like well done, you won, reward, for you only, exceptional gift, etc.
• Words requiring urgency: now, limited time, hurry, urgent, etc.
• Words related to money: cash, liquid, easy money, profit, gain, profit, income, etc.

You can find an exhaustive list of words to ban, also called spam words, in this article created by Plezi: spam words .

Smileys not to integrate

First of all, you must understand that it is entirely possible for you to insert a smiley in your subject line, this does not penalize your email campaign. However, overusing smileys is a known practice and carefully tracked by inboxes which systematically results in classification as spam. This is why you must be careful and not insert too many smileys. Concretely, we advise you not to insert more than two smileys in your subject, otherwise you will probably be sent to the spam folder.

READ ALSO: 9 tips to prevent your emails from falling into spam

Examples of objects

To help you concretely, we have selected for you several examples of objects which will allow you to easily understand the structure that we advise you to adopt.

Examples to follow

• Emailing: How to get the subject line right?
• Newsletter: how to write a good subject?
• Email: what does a good subject line look like?
• Email subject line: a lever to increase your opening rate.

Test your objects

When writing your subject line, it is important for you to know what type of subject line best suits your recipients. But how do you know? This is where the tests take on their full meaning, since they will allow you to best determine the type of object that appeals most to your Internet users. And to achieve this, the main means at your disposal is to carry out tests and then measure your performance. So you will be able to know the object structure that suits you based on your context.

Send multiple campaigns

The first step in conducting tests is to use different structures or wording in your subject lines across multiple email campaigns. This means that for each campaign, you will use a unique object type. You have several possibilities to vary your objects. For example, you can:

• Adapt your structure to each campaign: ask a question or not, announce the theme or not, find other structure ideas, etc.,
• Vary the wording of your questions,
• Modify the writing of the first part of your subject corresponding to the announcement of your theme,
• You can also subscribe to your competitors' newsletters to find ideas for different wording. Be careful, however, do not indicate your professional email address in which case your competitors will know that you are interested in their newsletter.
• If you are lacking inspiration, you can also entrust the writing of your objects to software. This is particularly the case with Activecampaign, which offers a free subject line generator . Concretely, you write the theme addressed, then the software makes you a proposal of several objects that you can use.
• Etc.

Analyze your statistics

Once you have sent several email campaigns and tested different subject lines, you need to analyze your performance. This way, you will know what type of subject line meets the needs of your readers. As mentioned in a previous paragraph, the main statistic to evaluate your subject is the open rate. As a reminder, the opening rate is calculated as follows: you must divide the number of times your email has been opened by the number of emails sent. Then, you simply need to find the best open rate across all your campaigns. You will be able to logically deduce that it is this type of object that you must reuse subsequently to meet the needs of your readers. However, we draw your attention to the fact that the needs and expectations of your readers may change over time. So, even if you have found a wording or object structure that seems to suit you, we advise you to regularly carry out tests with different objects and continue to measure your performance. In our opinion, carrying out tests once a year seems to be sufficient.

Conclusion

To conclude, here is the essential information to remember if you want to create a perfect subject for your email campaigns: 

1. The subject line is crucial since it represents your main means of encouraging Internet users to read the message you sent them. This is why you must write it carefully and devote a certain amount of time. It represents a key factor for the success of your emailing, and allows you to increase your opening rate.
2. The structure of your object is essential. Its purpose is to simplify as much as possible the understanding of the theme you are addressing in your email campaign. For this, and to allow your readers to clearly understand what you are talking about, we advise you to use an effective structure divided into two parts. In the first part, you will announce the subject you are covering in a few words. Then, in the second part, you will ask a relevant question for your Internet users.
3. To be exhaustive when writing objects, it seems important to us to watch out for spam. First of all, be aware that certain types of content placed in your subject line will tend to categorize you more easily in your readers' spam. Concretely, we advise you not to insert any smiley and to avoid certain particular words such as free, offered, gift, etc.
4. To help you succeed with your object, we have presented several examples of objects that you can use and adapt for your own campaigns. Of course, you can take inspiration from our examples. However, you can also use software to generate email subjects. Most of the time, this software is free and very easy to use. You just need to mention the topic you are addressing, and then the software does all the work. It offers you several items, all you have to do is make your choice.
5. The last piece of advice we give you is to carry out object tests in order to find the formula that suits you and that also suits all your readers. To do this, we recommend that you vary the structures of your objects and try to implement different formulations. Obviously, you must measure your statistics for each campaign, mainly the opening rate. When this indicator is at its maximum, you can deduce that you have found the item you need.  

In order to provide you with quality content, we called on an emailing expert. We turned to Mathieu, founder and editor at Blog du Digital , who wrote this guide.

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