Email Opening Rates Rely on 'Subject' Line

Personalised emails boost open rates. An email service provider found that personalised "subject" lines in particular increased the number of times recipients opened their mailings.

The "subject" line is so important that, even when marketers have recipients' permission, the wrong line can still mean trouble.

"The email’s 'from' and 'subject' lines become key elements that help recipients quickly decide whether the e-mail is spam" said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

"Yet legitimate marketers confuse such seemingly simple issues by sending messages from different groups within their companies" Mr. Hallerman said, "and hence with various 'from' lines".

"Or they use 'subject' lines that they hope will entice the recipient but are often not clear enough" he said.

A December 2006 study by the email Sender and Provider Coalition and Ipsos confirmed how crucial "from" and "subject" lines are. About seven in ten US Internet users said they judged these lines when deciding whether to report an email as spam.

The study also found that open rates have continued to decline, as they have since 2004, as more people started using e-mail programs that disable the “automatic image downloading" setting.

Even though open rates have gone down, click rates remain steady, suggesting that people are still reading their email despite the lower-reported open rates.