Inhabiting the email world from both within and without, you’d think that we email marketing ‘professionals’ would have learned what works….it’s not as if we don’t ever open emails ourselves! Yet, despite years of subject line testing and so-called ‘experts’ telling me that they know how to write the perfect subject line, I still don’t know what is best. The fact is, however, I still open some emails and not all of them; I still make a decision based on the subject line as to whether an email is worth reading. The question though, is what might be the trigger for me opening or deleting? What causes me to open the occasional email from that regular dropper of newsletters into my inbox? Questions…they seem to work. Well, questions that I think I might know the answer to; ‘What’s happening in the property market?’, ‘Would you like a free holiday?’ You know the sort of thing. Then there is the word play subject line; ‘Come play with me…’ (online poker – not what you were thinking!), ‘Two vouchers for you to play with’ (music this time!).

So these work for me – perhaps only because I think I’m so clever I can work out what they’re saying…. So what works for everyone else? Testing always proves what the winning line from a selection should be (and we still all test because despite the experts’ advice, we don’t actually know) – but only in the context of that email sent on that day with that audience and when the news and the weather and the state of the nation were at whatever point they were at the time.

So what we think might be the best line is probably only true for ourselves. I remember a particular subject line from my past which always won the tests and, even though it was disliked by everyone, always got all the highest click-throughs and results – ‘Ten shares set to rocket!’ It did what it said – it gave the unspoken promise of a fortune to be won from an ‘insiders’ list of shares that, for whatever reason, could or might be about to rise in value. It was opened by both people with only a passing interest in the stock-market who perhaps liked a gamble, and those who thought they knew what they were doing and wanted to prove it against the ‘expert’. For both the novice and the experienced there was a fascination in what secrets the author of the email might impart.

An isolated example I know, but one worth remembering; it’s not what we like, it’s what they like. And, more importantly (sorry to those creative people who think that they should be the reason for the success of an email campaign but who’ve been let down by a poor subject line writer), it is worth bearing in mind that the sender and the subject line is all that appears in my Yahoo.com inbox.