Top Tip Tuesday – Second Subject Line
Nigel Stickland
Helping owner managed businesses grow, scale, and flourish through our virtual marketing service. If your business is in the shadows, it’s time to get you visible, known, and in front of new customers.
We spoke last week about how changing the time you send your emails can improve the open rates. This week we have another very useful “trick” that can stop giving the impression that your email is just another salesy, corporate, mass email.
The main subject line is the one we all know and talk about.
But what we’re talking about here is the often forgotten ‘second’ subject line.
When you look at your inbox, you’ll see just three things in each email.
1. From Name
2. Subject Line
3. Second Subject Line or ‘preview’
The Second Subject Line is the preview of the first few words/sentence of your email.
The second subject line is critical to getting your email opened, and yet, so many people just ignore what they use in their emails.
The most common ‘second subject line’ in a marketing email is:
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER – Having trouble viewing this email? View it in your browser.
What a waste of space!
· It does NOT compel you to open the email in any way.
· It screams “I’m a mass mailed promotional email, please ignore me!”
When was the last time you emailed a friend with that sentence? And yet, not only do most people include it in their emails, but they give it pride of place right at the top so that it’s pulled in to the second subject line.
So have a look at your emails and the second subject lines that go out.
Whose line is it? Your email provider’s that’s auto-generated - or yours?
So if you’d like some help making your emails look like they’ve actually come from you, rather than a mass email sent to everyone, just drop us a message via [email protected]!