Boost Your Email Open Rates By Optimizing These 2 Things
Read Time: 5.0 minutes
Date: August 01, 2022
Make it simple, but significant.
—Don Draper, Mad Men
Remember the 80/20 rule or Pareto's Principle? It says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your input.
That got us thinking about how the smallest part of your email content, the subject line and preview text, can drastically affect the larger outcome - the open rate.
What’s the Tip?
When it comes to emails, there are several tricks to grabbing immediate attention. But our main tip today is this - keep your subject line and preview text short.
There are several reasons for this:
- Short subject lines get a 20% higher open rate than long ones.
- Your subject line will get cut off if it's too long.
- It's common for mobile email apps to truncate subject lines if they exceed 40 characters.
- Mobile users are 30% more likely to click on email subjects with fewer than ten words.
- The eye and the brain are better at digesting shorter words and phrases.
How Do You Use It?
Consider subject line length:
When it comes to emails, you should consider keeping subject lines between five and ten words or up to 50 characters.
According to data from Marketo, 41 characters - or 7 words - seems to be a sweet spot.
You can go a little longer for preview text:
When you compose your preview text, the ideal length is between 40-100 characters. Preview text is the small line of text that appears after the subject line in an email inbox.
What are Some Examples?
Here are some great subject line examples we grabbed from WordStream:
Cat’s outta the bag! Surprise sale tomorrow—up to 50% off!
It’s confirmed: Our prices are lower than the temperature outside—come on in!
Pressure’s on: How much can you save this week?
Here are some great preview line examples we found on drip, highlighting different retailers:
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What’s the Benefit to You?
You'll increase your chances of boosting your email open rates by simply optimizing your character and word counts for email subject lines and preview text. Simply being aware of these guidelines will separate you from anyone else who isn't aware of them.
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