As copywriters, we understand the importance of a powerful and compelling headline.  What better way to grab the reader’s attention and entice them to read more?

Subject titles in Emails act as the headline copy.  They’ve always been an important part of e-marketing.  After all, an Email saying ‘News from Joe Bloggs Ltd’ in the Subject box wouldn’t exactly leap at you … or would it?

A survey conducted by email marketing company Mailing Chimp, suggests a factual subject title might just result in a better opening rate.  Follow this link and scroll down to read about the survey.

Some 40 million emails sent through Mailing Chimp were analysed and the results are staggering.  The Simple Subject lines saying what the newsletter is and who sent it achieved far greater opening rates than the others.

Mailing Chimp doesn’t offer any explanation, but it would seem logical to assume it’s because of the huge volume of unsolicited spam emails which invade us on a daily basis.

Presumably, a clever headline has us reaching straight for the ‘delete’ button, while the plain and simple subject suggests the email is genuine and worth further investigation.  As an added bonus, taking the simple approach means you don’t have worry about trigger words alerting the spam filters either.

So, perhaps is it time for a change of attitude in email marketing.  We’ll be watching this one with interest and trying it for ourselves.  If you want to be kept informed, you can sign-up for our WORD-right newsletter here.  You’ll recognise it – it will be the one with the simple subject line.