Personalize subject lines to increase opens

Data out from Yes Lifecycle Marketing underlines the importance of personalizing email subject lines. While this has been a white-hat marketing technique for years, many brands continue to not personalize email subject lines.

by Kristina Knight

If you want to increase open rates, personalize those email subject lines. That's the word from Yes Lifecycle Marketing. Their report Subject Line Benchmarks: How Length and Personalization Impact Email Performance across Message Type and Industry found that emails with personalized subject lines showed a 50% higher open rate than those without personalized subject lines.

Personalized subject lines were also shown to have up to a 2x higher unique click rate. The problem? Most (98%) emails sent in Q2 2017 didn't have personalized subject lines.

"As consumers receive more marketing emails every day, personalization is a great way to engage them," said Michael Fisher, president of Yes Lifecycle Marketing. "Marketers should be harnessing customer data to customize their content as early on as the subject line. When marketers succeed in communicating the relevance of an email to each individual subscriber, from the get-go, they will see results in opens, clicks and conversions."

Other interesting findings from the report include:

• 14% of non-personalized subject lines were opened
• 21% of name-personalized subject lines were opened
• 22% of emails with alternate personalization - loyalty club member, etc - were opened

The full report can be found here.

Tags: email marketing, email marketing tips, email open rates, Yes Lifecycle Marketing