Last week MarketingSherpa had a great article on email design tips, but what I most enjoyed reading, as a copywriter, was the section on subject lines.

When you’re a freelance copywriter, you don’t always get to be as involved with email marketing as you want to be. For me, that means we don’t usually get to play a role in testing. The We Know Words team provides the copywriting then the client moves forward with the email marketing campaign without our involvement. That makes copywriting subject lines a real challenge. And since subject lines are key to getting people to open your email, it’s even more of a challenge.

The problem is, there’s no right answer on subject lines. I’ve seen one study that seemed to prove boring subject lines to work better than compelling ones. Yet as a copywriter that’s really hard to believe! Subject line length is another challenge. This MarketingSherpa article proves there’s no right answer, as different lengths have worked for different marketers. The only thing marketers can really do is test, test, test.

My takeaway from this? To encourage clients to test. Seriously, I’m going to be more proactive about it, to push them to do it, even though I’m not involved in it. I’m enjoying my current copywriting project, an email marketing campaign, because they were completely willing to test when I suggested it. So for each email I’m copywriting, I’m doing 2 to 3 different subject lines.

Now to remind them to do the testing and share the results with me. J