What’s the Character Sweet Spot for Email Subject Lines?
By Roberta Rosenberg on May 30, 2008 in DM Copy Tips & Tools, Web Copy Tips & Tools
I love rules-of-thumb, especially when they’ve been tested and are not simply an extension of someone’s anecdotal experience or bias. I also love direct response techniques and tools. Not to discount talent and creativity - that’s a given - but I just love having “stuff” to fiddle with.
So here’s another I’ve just come across and I’m sharing it with you.
Want the optimal character length for your email subject lines? Think 50, go for 80!
That’s what the testing reveals in the article, Email Analytics Reveal Sweet Spots In Subject-Line Length, published in this week’s Online Media Daily.
Drawn from a keynote address by Dela Quist, CEO of Alchemy Worx, here’s the lowdown:
- 50 character subject lines work best with a simple, powerful offer
- 80 character subject lines work best to entice, entreat, and tempt
- 60-70 character lines, for reasons that are unclear, just don’t get the open rates of the 50/80 lines
Quist theorizes that the longer subject lines give the mailer a better of presenting different concepts that may appeal to a larger number of different consumers thus boosting open rates.
So in the example - Find out Secrets to Spice up your Barbecue this weekend and all Summer Long and enter to win a New Weber Grill - you have something for the bbq fans as well as those who may be in the market for a new grill.
Surely, this goes against the conventional wisdom. I’m also wondering about the 17-character line length that our Blackberries afford us while perusing our emails on the go. Looking at the example above we get “Find out Secrets to …”
Will the email recipient be disappointed or enthralled to learn the secrets are about better grilling on the barbee? Dunno. Worth testing? You bet.
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James Hipkin | May 30, 2008 | Reply
I think 50/80 makes perfect sense.
Short for a sales promotion. It’s the offer stupid. If I’m in the market and see a deal I will open.
Long for direct marketing. Most people hate long copy. It’s only if a consumer is in the market that they will they consider reading it. If they read it and it’s well done / intriguing they will open. If a consumer isn’t in the market, it doesn’t matter if it’s 20 characters or 80, they won’t engage.
James Hipkin’s last blog post..Things I Learned Working in Rock & Roll
Roberta Rosenberg | Jun 4, 2008 | Reply
@James - excellent points, but what about the Blackberry/PDA angle?
Tom Chandler/Copywriter Underground | Jun 5, 2008 | Reply
Roberta: Aren’t Crackberry users typically too addicted to their devices to buy things any more? In fact, aren’t most currently being fed intravenously? At least I think that’s what Newsweek said.
Tom Chandler/Copywriter Underground’s last blog post..The High Tech Writer: A Blog Worth Reading
Dela Quist | Jun 27, 2008 | Reply
Hi Roberta
I thought you might be interested to hear that this story was based on a conversation I had at the email insider summit about an incomplete white paper I was working on. The research is now complete and if anything the results are even more conclusive than I had hoped for!
I run Alchemy Worx - a digital marketing agency with a 100% focus on email, and our findings are based on analysing over 600 subject lines and 200 million email messages and believe that this research disproves (PDA’s aside) the widely held view that short email subject lines are better.
We discovered that although subject lines with 50 characters or less make more people open the email - the traditional view - they are less likely to then go on and click on content or offers within the message. The study found that the click-to-open rates start to be optimised when the subject line is over 70 characters in length and continue to rise until well beyond 100 characters.
This is true for both the number of characters and the word count. The more words there were in the subject line, the better the click-to-open rate.
One of the most common questions I am asked at conferences is what subject lines work best, so I am delighted to discover this rule of thumb.
In the last eight years of working on our clients email marketing programmes we amassed plenty of circumstantial evidence that suggested longer subject lines could be as, if not more effective than shorter ones, so we commissioned this research to find out once and for all.
In summary our findings show that:
- Short subject lines less than 50 characters long or containing less than 6 words optimise open rates
- Long subject lines – over 70 characters or 10 words optimise both click and click-to open rates
We were also surprised to identify a “dead” zone!
- Subject lines of between 60 and 70 characters (6-10 words), optimise neither the open rate or click to open rates.”
The white paper containing full results and analysis is now available as a free download
http://www.alchemyworx.com/subjectlines-lengthiseverything.php
Roberta Rosenberg | Jun 27, 2008 | Reply
@Dela - Thanks so much for coming by and providing additional details - and a helpful link! - to your study. I for one am very appreciative as I’m just beginning an email subscription series. I’m looking forward to using your results as a basis for my subject lines!
Website Design Seattle | Jun 30, 2008 | Reply
What an interesting bit of info. It’s amazing what a difference of a few characters can make!