Every word of the subject line is of great importance as the reader tends to spend only a few seconds before making a decision.

October 26, 2018

3 Min Read
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An effective subject line for email marketing is the key to the opening rate. It must be short, catchy, interesting and not annoying. If a person reads your email on a mobile phone, keep in mind that you have a limit of approximately 33-35 symbols in order to fit the screen. Every word of the subject line is of great importance as the reader tends to spend only a few seconds before making a decision.

Here are five subject-line formulas with specific buzzwords that you can use in your email campaigns.

1. Begin with a question

The best buzzwords to use in your email subject lines are questions words, such as “what,” “where,” and “how.” There are a couple of reasons why these words work to capture attention. First, the subject lines ending with a question mark are more noticeable. Also, they motivate recipients to use their brain to produce an answer, which lets you gain a few more seconds of their attention.

Ask them questions that will highlight their pain points. What issues do the potential clients of IT shops have? Good questions in the email subject lines will resonate with the readers’ emotions and increase their curiosity.

Examples:

  • How often does your internet connection fail?

  • How much do you spend on storage?

  • Tired of printers that do not work?

2. A special offer with a deadline

If you run any promotions,  include the dates and numbers into your B2B email marketing subject lines. People love gifts and discounts.

Examples:

  • May 31 only! Get a 25% onboarding discount

  • Only 3 spots left for the free consultation

3. Numbers

One of the best practices for email marketing deliverability is mentioning some numbers in the subject line. These numbers may refer to your special offers, as we’ve already stated above, or they can refer to the useful content that your recipients may get if they open your email.

Use numbers whenever you can. Instead of, “How to easily recover a crashed server,” say, “3 ways to recover …” or “5 steps to recover …”

4. “If-then”

“If-then” statements are also very useful for your email subject lines. This may seem too easy, and you may ask yourself how it could help you increase your CTR. In spite of its simplicity, it’s really powerful as it triggers specific patterns of thoughts and leads your recipients in the right direction.

Examples:

  • “If you have a website” addresses those of your recipients who may have some issues with the website and look for a company to resolve these issues for them.

  • “If you’re looking for a VoIP solution” addresses those who have issues with the normal phone system and want to switch to the online tool with voice recording and other cool features.

5. “Only open if …”

This is one more useful email marketing buzzword as it urges your recipients to mentally apply the conditions to themselves, which raises strong emotions regardless of the outcome.

This works best when selling your managed IT services to a target audience. Just select the action that you want your recipients to make and add it to the end of the subject line.

Examples:

  • Only open if you don’t use the cloud storage

  • Only open if your servers never failed

Conclusion

Does it look like we’re trying to build the most annoying email ever?

Yes.

However, no matter how catchy your title is, if the content you deliver is not worth the attention, it’s basically useless. It’s of utmost importance to create valuable and interesting content to share your expertise with potential clients.

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This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

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