5 Ways to Craft Personalized Email Subject Lines

“Knock, knock!”

“Who’s there?”

“Happy Birthday Jonas! Here’s your gift of cakes & flowers xoxo.”

Now imagine if an email with a similar subject line landed in your inbox, on your birthday, in your name, with a gift personalized to your liking. Would you or would you click on the email?  After all, everyone loves to be loved, showered with gifts and attention on their special day!

If you are a marketer looking for perfectly concocted email subject lines that are hard to ignore, you are at the right place. Though the word perfection is a myth, we will offer strategies you can mold to create subject lines that suit your bespoke business type and brand voice.

Let’s explore ways to create email subject lines that work like a potent love potion straight from Hogwarts without any further ado!

1. Employ personalization albeit wisely:

Though this might seem like a no-brainer, it is important to reiterate that simply adding a subscriber’s name to the subject line will not guarantee higher open rates per se. It is important to include the name only when the email truly holds personalized product picks or offers for the particular subscriber. A good way to know whether you should go with a personalized subject line or choose one without it is by deploying the power of A/B testing.

2. Ensure that your subject line resolves customer pain points:

The best way to build lasting bonds with someone is to offer solutions to pertinent problems that can help them save moolah or make them feel better about a particular situation. When you delve deep into your subscriber’s preferences, shopping history, likes, and dislikes, you can collect a whole lot of data regarding their persona. This will help you create credible and laudable subject lines that people are most likely to relate to.

For instance, if a brand that sells sunscreen is looking to reach out to people battling Indian summers, they can craft an email subject line that goes like this, “Heartburns hurt, but sunburns can leave your face red and raw! Here’s a reliable fix.”

3. Hack into consumer psychology with undeniable social proof:

To quote Robert Cialdini, the renowned American psychologist, and author of “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” ~ “The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct….”

Let’s take a trip down the memory lane; as children, we imbibed certain values and behavioral patterns from our family and near and dear ones. To this day, we still seek some sort of validation and social proof before making a purchase. Marketers need to capitalize on Ciadini’s six principles of persuasion, namely reciprocity, consensus or social proof, commitment or consistency, authority, liking, and scarcity.

If you run a garment webshop, you could try something like this, “Ladies like yourself are loving these floral blouses,” or if you own a wine and cheese venture, “Oenophiles are confessing their eternal love for these cheese pairings.”

You get the drift, don’t you?

4. Refrain, I repeat, refrain from using unnecessary capitalization:

Whilst compiling this blog, I chanced upon an insanely funny yet inherently wise comeback from a guy who received this subject line on a Monday morning,

“YOU NEED TO RELAX!!!”

As you might have guessed, he never clicked on the email, and it sits as a reference for others to not to appear as if you are shouting at someone’s virtual face. Nope, nada.

5. Remember anniversaries and birthdays:

This applies not only to real life, wherein your friends and family will bond with you better when you make an extra effort to remember their special days. As a marketer, when you send out those birthday or brand anniversary emails, you give out the signal that you care. When the bond deepens between the brand and its subscribers, the open rates and click-throughs are known to go up! The option to automate email campaigns makes the job easier, so you can never really go wrong with this.

A simple “Happy Birthday, Jane!” subject line, can help you secure a place in your subscriber’s heart. 🙂

Summary

Experiment with A/B testing and emojis, and use the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), to supercharge your subject lines, and drive thrilling results. If you would like professionals to look into every stage of crafting and launching a stellar email marketing campaign, Email Uplers is here to help. Do drop in to say hi!