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Headlines in E-mails and Newsletters

Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 7:48 AM 2 comments Category: Business, Marketing, Meryl's Notes Blog, Writing

E-mail experts advice for e-mail subject headlines typically advise one of the following two ways:

Write short and catchy headlines in the Subject to entice people to read the e-mail.
Use the same headline in the Subject to stay consistent and make it easier for filtering.

Both work. In my little e-mail newsletter, I use the same headline changing only the month of the issue. Readers can filter the e-mail by “meryl’s notes” and have it go in their reading folder or at least, I hope, not the delete or junk folders.

But in the e-mail newsletters I do for InternetVIZ, we use two creative headlines. One in the initial sending and another in the second send that only goes to people who didn’t open the first send. This split testing provides insight as to what works and what doesn’t work.

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2 comments

Posted by: Leo Web Design on April 23rd, 2007, 10:20 AM
Be careful that the subject line isn’t too catchy or it may seem spammy at quick glance and not get opened. Identifying yourself in the subject line is more effective IMO because it quickly lets the reader know that that yes, it’s a “friendly face”!
Posted by: Michael A. Stelzner on April 24th, 2007, 9:13 AM
Hi Meryl;

I have found the following to be very effective

SUBJECT: [Newsletter Name] Catchy title

I used to simply include WhitePaperSource Newsletter in the subject line and in the beginning it worked.

However, over the years I say a decline. so I decided to adopt the above strategy and I saw my reads go up significantly.

I would be interested in your split test results Meryl.

Mike