Online email marketing provider Campaign Monitor analysed email open rates from 360,872 campaigns over fifteen months (a sample of 3,941,735,015 recipients!). They used this data to discover which words – and the order of these words – in the subject line resulted in the highest open rates.
Whilst there’s no magic formula to the perfect email marketing subject line, the study concluded the following 15 ‘power words’.
| First word: Open % Change |
Last word: Open % Change |
|
| Customer’s first name | 14.68% | |
| Invitation | 9.45% | 7.69% |
| Introducing | 7.36% | |
| We | 5.87% | |
| A | 4.09% | |
| Your / You / You! | 4.07% | 6.20% |
| Year, eg. 2014 | 3.89% | 2.84% |
| Update | 3.69% | |
| New | 3.26% | |
| Month name, eg. June | 3.25% | 3.34% |
| Special / Specials | 2.75% | 2.08% |
| News | 1.31% | 2.22% |
| Sale / Sale! | 2.40% | |
| Events | 1.97% | |
| Offer / Offers | 1.86% |
Conclusion: If you’ve got your recipient’s name – use it. They are more likely to open the email. Failing that, use pronouns (we, you/your) work well too.
Read the full article at Campaign Monitor
