EP. 1- LIFT Email Opens by 20%! Subject Line Quick Tips l Jay’s Scoop

Foreign welcome to do this not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this.

Not that I'm excited for this episode of do this. Not that this is going to be some rapid fire stuff and we're going to focus on something that you think is insignificant, but it is not.

We are going to talk about the first half of the email subject line. Yes, the first half of the email subject line. Why?

Because, believe it or not, in just the first few characters of the subject line, you will determine whether or not somebody engages with your email or they don't. And there are little things that you can do in those first few characters that can really boost the number of people that are opening up your emails.

So I want to go through a series of those right now that you can try and test. And the beautiful thing about your subject line, okay. Is that it costs you nothing. It takes no time.

Anybody could blah, blah, blah, type in a few letters or a few numbers and change the outcome of their email marketing campaigns. So everything that we're talking about right now is all about testing. So let me give you a few of the tips about the start of your subject line.

First off, let's get that out of the way.

When you have an email offer, I don't care if you're marketing to consumers or business professionals, whatever your offer is, let's say you're promoting a webinar. Say you have a 30% off sale. You can say, check out the great blah, blah, blah, it's a 30% off sale. You can't say it at the end.

You can't say, we have this amazing speaker. Check out our webinar. You can't see that at the end, the offer. The offer has to be in the first half of your subject line.

Because here's the secret about email, here's the secret about all marketing. Nobody cares about anything, right? What I mean by that is no one reads the full subject line. They read the first few words like, oh, I'm into it.

Let me check out the rest. So whatever your offer is, it's got to be in the first half of your subject line. People ask, how many characters should I have?

My subject line should be 50 or 40 or 60. I don't care about how many characters you have in your subject line. I care about where your offer is promoted. It's got to be in the first half.

Okay, now let's move on from that. The very first character in your subject line. The first character is a game changer.

If the first character in your subject line is a number, a number, like literally like the number seven. The seven things you need to know about the the four hottest fashion trends.

If it is actually a number, not written out word number, an actual numeric number. If that is the first character in your subject line, it lifts your open rates, the number of people opening up your emails by over 20%.

Just by having it be a number, you're like, why? And the reason being is number one, it stands out. And it's all in the subconscious.

It's not like somebody is looking at their inbox and they see the number seven, like, oh, this email's awesome. Let me check this out. Nobody says that, okay? But subconsciously they see something that stands out.

And when you see a number, it usually means it's like a list of something. The seven this, the four this, the eleven that. Very authoritative, very definitive.

The person knows it's going to be quick and they're more likely to open up the email.

The secret sauce about numbers, though, that people don't realize, it can't be a number that ends in a 0, like the number 10, or it can't be anything like 5, like 25, or even the number 5 or 15. For some reason, we don't like what I like to call round numbers.

Anything that's a 0 or 5, it's got to be a 7, an 11, a 4, a 9, because it seems more real. Okay? So that's a very first character of your subject line. All right?

The other thing you do is capitalize the first word in your subject line, whatever it is, the word new. Okay? Capitalize the first word. All right? If it's an event, check it out. And that can be capitalized just that first word, even if it's two words.

If you just capitalize the first word or two words, it stands out. It does really well. Someone out there saying, wait, I'm going to go to the junk folder, I'm going to the spam folder.

Because you can't capitalize, right? You can't put a number in the subject line. You can't put an emoji. You can't. You can't put an exclamation point. And that's not true, okay?

I don't care what people say out there. That information that you're going to get filtered. Go to the junk folder spam folder.

Because of the content of your subject line or the headline, your email. That's information from 10 years ago.

You go to the junk folder spam folder because of the engagement, the sending reputation that you have with your overall email program, not because you capitalize the word or even if you said the word free, that's not the reason. So, yes, capitalizing that first word, it's a great easy test, give you a nice boost. Because why it causes you to stand out.

Another thing that you can do, brackets, okay, Brackets.

You take two brackets to start your subject line and you put the most important word or phrase in the bracket, whatever it is that you're promoting, you know, new sale in brackets. You put it right there in brackets. Okay, on demand video in brackets. All right, you have it be in brackets.

Meta does this a lot with a lot of their emails. And why do brackets work? Because it stands out.

Again, whatever you can do when you hit send on your email campaigns, I don't care if you're sending out a campaign to business professionals or to consumers, you must say the same thing in your mind over and over and over again every time you hit send. Which is, what am I going to do on this email that I'm sending out?

That's going to cause my email to stand out amongst all the other emails that are there. What am I doing this time when I hit send, right, and you say, oh, I got a number to start my subject line? I'm capitalizing the first word.

I'm going to use brackets to start the subject line. Okay? These are things that can be a game changer.

And of course, the one that ultimately stands out that you should absolutely test if you haven't is having the first character. Can't be at the end of your subject line. Got to be that first character. Have it be an emoji. Yes, an emoji.

94% of all receiving emails, people that receive emails can now see emojis properly, whether it's business or consumer. Are emojis stupid. Absolutely right. But it doesn't matter because basically it's a graphical symbol that causes your emails to stand out.

And I don't care if you market to the most conservative audience. Almost every email newsletter that Goldman Sachs sends out is they have an emoji in their subject line.

I promise you, your emails are not as boring as what Goldman Sachs is sending out. Right? So you can use emojis if on the business side, if they were called business icons instead of an emoji, you would use them, right?

You take a calendar emoji, you put that at the start of your subject line. And for consumer or business, if you take the, the countdown clock, the little clock emoji, put that at the start of your subject line. It works.

It's a great easy test. So I want you to be laser focused, not just on your subject line overall, but on the start of your subject line.

So at the end of every one of these episodes, we do a segment called since you didn't ask, which is about zero to do with marketing or business or whatever. So since you didn't ask, what is going on? I'm going to tell you what's going on.

I am in the middle of watching the new season of the Real Housewives of New York. Now, why is this important? It's not, but it's very good. It's on Peacock. If you don't get that, I don't even know what I'm subscribed to anymore.

It's very annoying. I even get the Hallmark Channel. That's a whole other problem I have.

But the reason you want to check out the new season of the Real Housewives of New York is they have a whole new cast. It's not Ramona and Sonia and Bethany Frankel. No, it's all new people. They're all disasters. And it's fantastic.

So I give it a strong double thumbs up to check that out. And so that's what's going on in my life. Isn't that embarrassing? That's what's going on in my life.

I have like a whole family and I have a whole thing going on. But I think if the first thing that comes to my mind what's going on in my life, it is that, oh my goodness.

Anyway, I hope you check out more episodes. Hope you try this out on the start of your subject line. And thanks for being here for do this, not that you did it. You made it to the end. Nice.

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