The Psychology of a Great Subject Line

In email marketing, it all starts with a subject line. That small line of text is the first thing subscribers read, and it often dictates whether or not your message is opened.

About 47% of subscribers say they weigh the decision to “read it or leave it” based on the subject line alone.

Given the importance of subject lines, it’s easy to see why marketers work to craft the perfect ones. To help in your quest for the perfect subject line, here are four tips that use psychology to compel subscribers to open your email:

1. Get personal

One of the best ways to get subscribers to open your email is to personalize the message. You need to convey your connection to a subscriber right away in the subject line.

Personalization helps subscribers focus on what’s important to them and tune out the rest of the noise. Psychologists call this the “cocktail party effect.”

At a cocktail party, people are able to focus on one, personal conversation without being distracted by the mass of people in the room. The same holds true for email. Subscribers pay attention to the messages that are personalized and ignore the rest of the clutter.

Here’s a great example of a personalized subject line and email from Flight Centre. Not only does the subject line contain the subscriber’s first name, but so does the body of the email. In addition, the suggestions inside the email are based on the subscriber’s most recent website searches for vacations in Cuba.

Tips to get personal:

Go beyond adding a subscriber’s first name to the subject line and use personalized content throughout the email.
Set up data collection points so you’re constantly collecting information about your customers that can strengthen your email content.
Personalization is hard to do at-scale, so segment your email contacts by interest, past purchases, location, sex, job title or age to send more targeted emails.

2. Ask a question

Try asking subscribers a question in your next subject line. Why? Humans are driven to answer questions. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll search for it.

Not knowing the answer to a question causes “a sort of irritation and tension that begs for closure,” according to a psychological concept known as the Zeigarnik Effect.

For example, what do you do when you hear a song but can’t remember the artist? You grab your phone and look it up, right? You had to find the answer to your question. If you didn’t, it would bug you all day.

You can apply that same kind of psychology to your subject line. Ask a question that subscribers have to open your email to answer.

Here are some great examples. Both eBay and CoSchedule pique curiosity with these questions and provide the solutions inside their email.

Tips to ask a question:

Keep the question short. Research shows 65 characters is the sweet spot for a subject line.
The subject line asks the question, while the body of your email should provide the answer.
Asking a question in the subject lines requires pre-planning. Think of the question first and design the rest of the email to fit.

3. Use social proof

Consumers make decisions based on what others are doing. In other words, subscribers are compelled to buy something because “everyone’s doing it.” It’s a psychological phenomenon called social proof.

How can you weave social proof into your subject line? Focus on testimonials.

Show subscribers what their peers think of your product by highlighting positive reviews and customer feedback.

Psychology aside, there’s research that shows how powerful testimonials can be. Eight-eight percent of consumers trust product advice from friends and family and 66% say they trust online reviews written by customers, according to Nielsen Research.

Create an email that focuses on what others are saying about your product. Here’s a great example from Revolution Tea that highlights four reviews from customers. The subject line might read, “See what your friends think of Revolution Tea,” or “Why our customers love our tea, and you will too.”

Tips to use social proof:

Highlight reviews from real clients. Never make up reviews.
Consider using images in your email of clients actually using your product or service.
Use your subject line to promote the testimonials inside your email.
Try to get reviews or testimonials that speak to specific products rather than general feedback. Specifics help subscribers make decisions.

4. Offer exclusive deals

Exclusive deals make consumers feel special; like they’re part of an elite group. This sense of belonging is a psychological necessity, according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow says humans are wired to meet certain needs, one of which is being part of a group or social network. You can appeal to subscribers’ urge to belong in your next email.

Try creating a VIP club that receives special promotions or gives a certain segment of your subscribers insider access to new products or discounts.

Wayfair, an online furniture company, used this subject line to offer a one-of-a-kind-deal to a subscriber.

You can also incorporate an interactive experience into your email to really double down on the psychological effect on your audience’s interest. Offer them an exclusive, mystery deal that they have to interact with to reveal, like the Scratch-it seen below. Tips offer exclusive deals:

Make the deal or offer worthwhile. An exclusive offer should live up to the hype.
Use words like “exclusive” or “VIP” in the subject line so subscribers can identify with it immediately.
Use exclusive offers sparingly. If you send too many “exclusive deals” it will lose its effectiveness.
You don’t have to send exclusive deals to everyone on your list; segment your contacts and spread the deals around.

Wrap up

Crafting a must-read subject line isn’t easy. Marketers have spent a lot of time and effort dissecting tactics that work, but understanding a little psychology can put you on the right track.

As you create subject lines, take the time to test them. See if your psychology-based subject lines are more effective than those without. Run split tests before you email an entire segment to make sure subscribers respond. Eventually, using psychological concepts in your subject line will become second nature.

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Andrea Robbins

Andrea Robbins is a Demand Generation marketer at Campaign Monitor. Her favorite things include getting outdoors, writing, emojis, & cats. Follow her on Twitter @andirobz

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The Marketing Psychology Behind Successful Marketing Campaigns

Most modern-day marketers don’t think about it too often, but our entire career field is built upon the principles of marketing psychology. John B Watson, born in 1878, is one of the fathers of modern marketing, and he spent his entire career studying and utilizing ethical psychological methods to influence customer behavior. His successful campaigns include advertising for Pond’s Cold Cream and Pembco Toothpaste. He took an approach that appealed not to his customer’s rational thoughts, but instead, his campaigns appealed to their emotions and stimulated a desire for the product.

At the same time that Watson was in the process of creating the field of marketing and exploring the themes of marketing psychology, another famous advertiser and psychologist, Walter Dill Scott, was also making a splash on the scene. Scott was motivated to create a template for successful advertising, and his approach was firmly rooted in psychological principles marketers still use today.

Scott outlined the ideal steps of an advertising campaign, and set the following goals, which became the basis of marketing initiatives worldwide:

Capture the Viewer’s Attention

Despite all the years that have passed since Scott created his ideal steps of advertising, modern-day marketers still know that capturing a customer’s attention is one of the most important parts of your campaign. While the tactics to gain viewer’s attention may have changed since the early 1900s, the core component of this strategy is still the same. By creating intrigue, or curiosity surrounding your message, you ensure your readers will open your email or click through to your campaign.

Curiosity is such a powerful force of psychology that it still stands as one of the backbones of any strong marketing campaign. Further study into the effectiveness of creating curiosity has shown that the brain chemicals released when curiosity is satiated are similar to those released during memory production. Scott may not have known it back then, but when you capture the viewer’s attention with curiosity, they’re more likely to remember whatever message you serve up at the end of your campaign. Modern day marketing tactics like reveal marketing are firmly rooted in these psychological principles of the past.

Create Positive Feelings in the Consumer Surrounding Your Message or Product

Another core tenet of Scott’s approach to marketing involved creating positive feelings and associations in the customer surrounding your advertising campaigns or the product itself. Scott came onto the psychology scene only a few years after Ivan Pavlov had discovered the base components of operant conditioning. Pavlov’s famous dog experiment proved that you can create associations between images or sounds, and positive or negative effects on mood and behavior. This theory is known as operant conditioning, and it remains as one of the core components of marketing campaigns today.

Modern day marketers use operant conditioning through approaches like reveal marketing, which requires the viewer to interact with your message to uncover a hidden portion of your marketing campaign or to gain access to a discount offer. By conditioning your customer’s to always interact with your marketing in hopes of gaining an awesome discount, you’re keeping the marketing psychology of the past relevant in today’s busy digital world.

Create Desire in the Consumer by Calling Upon Their Emotions

I’m sure back in the day, Scott could have never predicted an emotion as powerful and effective in marketing as FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Despite FOMO not being added to the dictionary until 2013, Scott’s ideas conceived at the beginning of the 1900s, already foresaw how emotion might play a large role in marketing effectiveness. Over the years, advertising campaigns have sought to evoke a variety of emotions including lust, envy, fear, and joy. FOMO is the modern marketer’s best tool for creating a desire in their customers. By evoking your reader’s fear of missing out, you invite them to become emotionally invested in your campaign, which boosts engagement and helps you create more revenue.

Combine the power of an emotion like FOMO with the effectiveness of reveal marketing campaigns, and watch your interaction climb through the roof. Modern-day consumers expect digitally savvy campaigns that invite them to interact at every step along the way and reveal marketing fulfills those desires without losing sight of the core principles of marketing psychology that our entire field are built upon.

From the early 1900’s to today, marketing has changed in many ways, but the effectiveness of utilizing psychology in your campaigns has remained the same. Reveal marketing is the 21st century’s response to the great marketing ideas of the past. Marketers operating in the internet age have been able to successfully transform the psychological principles handed down by industry thought leaders over 100 years ago into campaigns that speak to the modern consumer. Learn more about reveal marketing and how it was created with these psychological principles in mind by taking our reveal marketing 101 course or checking out our academy today.

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nicolecordier

Nicole Cordier is a Marketing Intern at Zembula. A Journalism graduate from the University of Oregon, she is a Portland native who loves coloring, dogs and all things outdoors.

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