Shocking! Clickbait Headlines May Be Ruining Your Email Marketing
Study finds that consumers are less likely to open emails with words like "shocking" and "secret of" in the Subject line.
You won’t believe it! (Actually, I think you will.) Clickbait headlines often work on social networks and across the web, but they’re not a good idea for your marketing emails.
That’s according to “The Art and Science of Effective Subject Lines,” a new study out today from Return Path. The company looked at more than nine million emails sent by “prominent global brands” to more than two million consumers between January 1 and February 28 of this year.
Return Path found that emails with clickbait-like words in the Subject line had lower read rates when compared to similar emails sent with less clickbait-like subject lines. For example, emails using the phrase “secret of” performed well below average (almost nine percent) and the word “shocking” led to a 1.22 percent drop in read rate. On the other hand, when the wording used more tame language like “get rid of” and “what you need to know,” read rates performed a little above average.
The study also found that subject lines with language suggesting a sense of urgency were among the best performers across the board. The phrase “still time” performed a whopping 15.54 percent better than average, and similar phrases were successful, too:
- expiring: 1.63% above average
- last chance: 1.05% above average
- limited time: 3.05% above average
- now: 0.24% above average
The full report is available free in PDF form and no registration or contact information is required.
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