I have written a lot of email subject lines in my life, and until this month I wrote every single one by feeling. I would think of something that sounded good to me, decide it was clever, and hit send. Whether people opened it was a mystery I never really solved.
This month I started A/B testing them, and I feel a little silly for not doing it years ago.
How simple it actually is
Most email tools let you do this now with almost no effort. You write two subject lines. The tool sends version A to a small slice of your list and version B to another small slice. Whichever gets more opens automatically goes out to everyone else. You do nothing but write the second option and wait a couple of hours.
That is it. The tool runs the experiment for you and picks the winner.
The results humbled me
The subject lines I was sure would win kept losing. The clever, witty ones I was proud of got beaten by plain, clear ones that just said what was inside. A boring “here is the thing you asked for” would crush a cute play on words. Curiosity beat cleverness. Specific beat vague. Short usually beat long.
Over a few sends the pattern was so consistent that I had to accept it. My taste in subject lines was not as good as I thought. The audience had opinions, and their opinions were the only ones that actually mattered.
Why this stuck with me
The subject line is the whole ballgame in email. It does not matter how good the message is if nobody opens it. And I had been leaving that entirely to guesswork, the single most important line, decided by vibes.
Now I test every one. It costs me nothing, it takes two minutes, and my open rates have climbed just from letting the audience vote instead of trusting my gut. This is my mantra showing up again in the smallest possible place. Do not guess the subject line. Test it. The reader will tell you, and they are always right.
Write a comment