Top tips for creating an effective subject line

One of the first things that a recipient sees when they receive your email campaign is the subject line that you have given it. This therefore has a direct impact on your open rates. If the recipient is not inspired by the subject line to open the email, they are likely to simply delete it without ever seeing the content of your newsletter.

To increase open rates, you must create a subject line for your email marketing campaign that will encourage your recipients to open the newsletter.

Here's our top tips on creating an effective subject line:

1. Ensure that it is short in length, up to 70 characters. If it is too long it may not display properly in the inbox.

2. If you have basic information for your recipients, personalise the subject line. It may intrigue them enough to open the email. For example 'Hi John - here's your August eShoutz newsletter'.

3. Don’t use CAPS, spam words or lots of exclamation marks. The subject line can determine whether or not the email makes it into the junk box or not, as it scanned for spam in the same way as the content of the email is.

4. Test different subject lines over time to evaluate the best approach for your business. Test questions, offers and headlines to see which receive the best open rates.

5. It should grab attention and entice people to open it. Offers and promotions help open rates.

For more email marketing top tips visit the eShoutz.com website.

Personalise emails to improve conversions

If you collect general information about your recipients at the data capture point, you can use it to personalise your email marketing campaigns. By requesting information such as first name and surname on your newsletter sign-up, you are likely to improve your return on investment from your email campaigns.

Personalising a subject line with a recipient's name can often intrigue them enough to open your email campaign. Also, addressing the recipient in the content such as 'Dear John' can increase click through rates as the recipient often feels that you are taking a personal approach and that the email is specifically for them.

It is also advisable to gather preference information about your recipients. For example, as part of your newsletter sign-up you should include a small survey so that you can find out why someone is signing up for your newsletter and what products or deals they are particularly interested in. For example, if you have a travel website, find out what travel products they prefer - sun holidays, city breaks, cruises, ski deals? You can then use this information to tailor your email campaigns to their preferences.

For more information on personalising email campaigns, visit eShoutz.com.

When to send email campaigns

To get the most out of your email campaign you need to know when the best time is to send; however, there is no definitive answer. The best day to send is very personal to your email campaigns and the way to determine this is through testing on different days to see when you get most reponse in terms of open rates, clicks, conversions etc.

When testing try to think like one of your readers and also think when are you messages most relevant. For example, if your message is 'weekend sale', you will create little sense of urgency if you send out on a Monday, 5 days prior to the weekend. You should also bear in mind how seasonality and national holidays could effect your email campaigns.

Visit eShoutz for more information.

Creating an email is easy with eShoutz

It is easy to create email marketing campaigns with eShoutz. You have a number of options when creating a new email campaign. You can use the WYSIWYG tool to create the html email yourself from scratch, use an easily editable template stored within the system or import your own template design into eShoutz.

The WYSIWYG tool is for those who wish to create their own template online instead of building it offline in an html programme. It is ideal for email marketers who have some experience in building html, but want to create an email campaign straight in eShoutz to guarantee that it works within the system. The 'point and click' feature means that by using the simple toolbars in eShoutz you can soon have a full email campaign ready to send to your address books.

Alternatively, there are over 70 html templates within eShoutz which are quick and simple to edit. Add your own images, text and links to the coloured template for a quick email marketing solution. There are also a number of readily designed templates which can be edited, great for Valentine's Day and other holiday promotions. This option is ideal for those with a tight email marketing budget and are not sending to a large database of email addresses.

For a more effective email marketing campaign with a better possibility of getting an excellent ROI (return on investment), import a professionally designed html email into eShoutz. The eShoutz design team can create professional html templates that reflect your website and the overall theme of the campaign. The html template can be created offline then imported with the touch of a button ready for sending via eShoutz.

For more information on creating email marketing campaigns with eShoutz, visit the website at eshoutz.com or sign up for a free trial at eshoutz.com/freetrial.