Recently, we covered some basic themes on how to create great email subject lines for your subscribers, ensuring that they read your emails. Email marketing remains one of the best and most influential marketing strategies if for no other reason than it costs virtually nothing to use, and practically everyone has an email account. While we covered some of the more abstract concepts on how to accomplish this prior, we also want to touch on more technical concerns. Below, we will walk you through some of the better elements to embrace and some of the pitfalls to avoid when building email campaigns designed for success.

Keep Email Headings Short

Whenever you have a lot to say, it can be tempting to put it all out there. We know that email marketing open rates are quite low (though generally, not as low as engagement rates for paid ad clicks), but the best thing about email marketing is that it usually is free! In addition, cramming too much in your email subject line will result in many people not seeing the full heading anyway; most people check their emails on mobile devices these days, which truncate subject lines in most cases. The ideal subject line will be 50 characters or less; any more than that, and you are just pinging noise to your subscribers. Simple, short email subject lines – sometimes, even just one word – perform leaps and bounds above that of long-winded ones.

Avoid Spam Buzzwords

Action words are highly desirable in email subject lines, as they are designed to get people to act. As time has passed and the concept of email marketing has been subject to “inflation” – more and more people sending more and more emails in order to compete – email companies and users alike have adapted. When you use words such as “buy”, “cheap”, “rewards”, “earn”, and so forth, this is an automatic indicator to search engines that you are spamming. With the unveiling of Gmail’s “Promotions” tab in particular, even if your email is not routed to the spam folder, it very well may land in this oft-ignored tab. By using email services such as MailChimp, you can test your subject lines before sending them to avoid this fate.

Use Local Terms When Possible

If your email marketing campaigns target individuals from all walks of life geographically-speaking, then it may not be possible in all cases to target individuals locally. However, email subject lines often can be configured with premium email marketing tools to do this. By including local terms – city names, states, and so on – users’ eyes will automatically be more attracted to the email. This phenomenon has been documented in studies measuring click rates on identical email campaigns that use a combination of local terms and no local terms. For some, you may be pinging noise if you do not include a local term or buzz word to draw their eyes in and force them to take a second look. When possible, continue the trend of using local terms in the email body for added effect.