Web Wise

Crafting an Effective Subject Line

E-mail marketing should be an important element to any shop's electronic communications strategy. It keeps your shop, its capabilities and its news fresh in the minds of customers and potential customers. This type of marketing is becoming as important as direct mail marketing efforts.

Whether you create your own e-mail marketing campaigns, or use an outside company to add pizzazz to your electronic marketing idea, if you're not crafting a well-designed subject line to your e-mail, then you're not using the full power of an e-mail promotion. Subject lines are one of the most important components of a successful promotional or newsletter e-mail. The content of a subject line is the key determinant for whether a recipient will open an e-mail, delete it immediately, ignore it or filter it as spam.

The subject line content is also a major component in the algorithm of many Internet service providers and recipient-level spam filters. In other words, a poorly written subject may cause the e-mail to not even reach the recipient's inbox in the first place.

When crafting a subject line for your e-mail marketing campaigns, keep these principles in mind:

• Inform: Subject lines should convey something important, timely or valuable. It has to convey that if the e-mail isn't opened, the customer will be losing out on something of real value.
• Create Intrigue: Your e-mail is competing with many other e-mails for the recipients' attention. To increase the chance of having your e-mail read it must intrigue the recipient, much like a newspaper or magazine headline.
• Build Trust: Your subject line can amplify or hurt your shop's image. Subject lines that over-promise or mislead will ultimately destroy trust with recipients. Be honest in your subject lines.
• Call for Action: Subject lines drive click-through rates. They ultimately direct recipients to pay attention to specific articles, products and information. Subject lines should reflect your goals and direct recipients to take the desired action.
• Subject Lines and From Lines Must Work Together: Largely because of the dramatic increase in spam e-mail, recipients increasingly look at a combination of the from and subject lines to determine whether it is from a trusted source. The function of a subject line now must not only get your customers to open an e-mail, it must discourage the customer from deleting it as an unwanted spam.

ASA Web Ways

AutoInc. Podcasts from Las Vegas

As part of the 11th annual NACE Online Daily News, AutoInc. will conduct several podcasts during the International Autobody Congress and Exposition (NACE) Nov. 1-4 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. Podcasts will include audio from Thursday morning's General Session, various press conferences and the Saturday Town Hall Breakfasts. Podcasts can be listened to directly from the NACE Online Daily News Web site (www.NACENOW.com), or downloaded onto any MP3 device.

Net Worth is written by Colby Horton, ASA's electronic communications manager. He can be reached at (800) 272-7467, ext. 234, or by e-mail at colbyh@asashop.org.

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