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Kate Novozhilova

How to make the perfect email title.Sharing techniques and life hacks.

Title is the first thing a subscriber sees when an email comes. If it catches his attention, he opens the letter. If not — swipe, and the email sinks in the inbox.

In this article, we reveal the secrets and share the techniques of writing clickable titles that we use ourselves.

An email title draws a subscriber's attention and motivates him to open a letter — so the open rate of the mailing directly depends on it.

And, on top of that, a successful topic indirectly affects a total click rate index, a conversion rate of the letter, the brand image and even your relationship with the client.

We knocked on the discord-doors of our content department (aka Swords) and found out how to write email titles which would catch, intrigue and bring you clicks.

The shorter the title — the better. The perfect title length is from 1 to 5 words. Learn this rule by heart and immediately take it to work. In the meantime, we’ll explain everything further

Remember how you read the mail: quickly run through the inbox and selectively open something that catches your eye. And that's what everyone does! Therefore, convey the most important things briefly — a couple of words will be enough to captivate the reader.

Every barber knows, but still

Rules you know, but it is important to repeat them again.

Well, in short…

85% of users read email on their smartphones. This is another reason to make the topic short — it is important that the text doesn't go beyond the boundaries of the screen and is fully visible. "Did you know that we have disc..." is unlikely to intrigue anyone, and all important information is hidden.

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Have a profit? Gotta brag it

If you have a cool offer (discount, gift, promo code) — tell about it right in the topic. This technique increases OR and immediately makes the subscriber understand why he needs to read the letter.

You can also season your title with FOMO (fear of missing out) so that the recipient opens an email immediately, and does not postpone it and, of course, forgets about its existence after five minutes (seconds?). Try it, and you will be surprised how a simple human "the offer will end soon" can boost your OR.

Safe-word is "spam"

The title affects delivery rate. We still don’t know how exactly mailers recognize spam, but it’s obvious that some phrases trigger spam filters.

For example, the words: near you, sale, make money and discount — increase the chance that the letter will get into spam. The more "triggers" in one email, the less delivery rate you'll get. So…Be creative!

How to come up with a subject of an email: our techniques

We’ve written a bunch of topics, tried everything that is possible and impossible, and share our experience.

If the content of the letter and TOV allow — use something as strange as possible. Something freaky enough that the recipients will think that you’ve gone crazy, confused everything and haven't woken up at all yet

Get freaky

The Chef editor Rita recommends:

"Congratulate on Easter in January or make a mistake on purpose. For example, we wrote: "So, this are the Mailfit agetncy" when we made the announcement of the proofreading landing page.

People usually screen such strange topics and share them in chats with the words 'Look, what’s happened with these guys?', and then, of course, they open the letter itself and understand what's happened"

If you are in a playful mood, you can add intrigue to the title. For example, write that in the letter there’s something "SOOOOOOOOO cool!".

*Soundtrack of "The Shining" starts here*(create suspense we mean)

But don’t overindulge this technique too much: use this wow effect only if there is a really significant profit in the letter — not an egg as a gift for buying four dozens

Use emojis unusually: not just as an accompaniment to the text ("Discount on applesка "), but arrange an interactive with the recipient. For example, make a quiz or tell subscribers a short (short!) story.

For example, we prepared a really cool email for the New Year. There were many, many rabbits inside. So we wanted as many subscribers as possible to see them. That's why we wrote: "Here, treat our rabbits: щщщ ". Then we checked the OR and realized: people really treated them!

Play with words (it’s like with fonts, but with words)

"With a blank sheet" — for a letter from a home improvement store. "Sip happens" — for the alcoholic beverages store. Or "Don’t make miss steak"... In general, find an inner Punland inside yourself.

Explore idioms, proverbs and phrases from memes that you can appropriately make a great play with. Then embed an offer or a brand product inside it and — voilà, your title is irresistible.

Titles of such an approach are also often shared in chats, and subscribers are really motivated to stop and look for your witty jokes inside the letter.

Imagine how your offer can solve the problem of the recipient of the letter. Have you found a sore spot? Now don’t push there — show how cool our offer can ease the situation.

Call the marketing dep — here’s an ouchie

Turning the floor over to Roma — our copywriter:

"Communicate with the reader directly in the title. For example, ask a question which is relevant to the target audience: "Have you decided how to spend the weekend?" or "How many calories are in your favorite dish?".

And immediately answer the question right in the title, for example: 'Choose an event in our schedule' or 'Find out in our app'.

Well, what if nothing still comes to mind

Then take some more of our life hacks.

Gosha Matavkin
Writer, that guy

"I usually take the main banner and think how the same thing can be said in other words. This approach especially works for emails with discounts, new products, announcements.

It depends on the client how creative you can be in these other words. Sometimes, by the way, I understand that the title is somehow better for the main banner or vice versa. Then I slightly adjust them, if necessary, and switch their places".

Zhanna Azaryan
Writer, at lunch

"If nothing comes to your mind, you can write as many draft options as possible and then "clean up" the whole list. There is such a rule of five minutes: you set a timer, write everything that comes to mind, and then polish it."

One more trick from Gosha, that that guy

"I like when a preheader continues a sentence in the title. For example!

Title: How cool it is to write great titles
Preheder: To increase an open rate of mailings".

Made