The success rate of your emails depends on the decision of your subject line. Whether you are sending it to fellow businesses (B2B) or customers (B2C), it’s all about the subject.

A study found that short subject lines with 10 characters or less had the best open rates, with an average of 26%. However, 74% of the subject lines were 21 to 60 characters long and, not surprisingly, these had the lowest open rate, sitting at 13.8%. Additionally, subject lines that were under 21 characters yielded a 31% higher-than-average open rate but are only 5% of all email subject lines.

Furthermore, subject lines that included recently purchased/browsed item or the recipient/receiver name in them, had 50% higher open rates, 58% higher click-to-open rate and were clicked nearly 2.5 times more than emails that were not as personalized.

Looking at these numbers, it could be expected that subject lines with more than 60 characters would be disastrous, as lenght may appear the biggest enemy of success. However, that’s actually not true. Subjects of this length, in fact, represents 21% of the total number and, suprisingly, the open rate for them is 14.8%, being higher than subject lines 10 to 60 characters long. The explanation is that, with so many characters, it’s possible to create interest by including specific keywords relevant to the recipient.

However, it’s important to note that different industries will have different results. For instance, the hospitality/travel industry scored better with subjects lines shorter then 20 characters. Publishing and financial services, instead, found highest open rates with subject lines from 21 to 60 characters. However, the industries that had significant positive results with subjects shorter than 20 characters were the retail industry and the tech industry, respectively with 18.3% and 17.5% click rates.

During the second quarter of 2017, 23 percent of the brands polled sent users emails about carts with unpurchased items. Sixty-two percent of those messages had subject lines between 31 and 50 characters, and got a below-average open rate of 11.9 percent. They often aimed to entice customers to come back to abandoned carts with promises of discounts. However, these were more readily disregarded than the shorter subject lines between 21 and 30 that had the highest open rate at 36.8 percent, with subject lines that read, “you forgot something.”

Written by: Pietro Paolo Frigenti

Source: Report provided by Yes Lifestyle Marketing