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Do you open emails based upon subject lines or who the email is from?
by
Rosie Sherry
https://twitter.com/pauldm/status/1235530356075438080
If I don't know the sender, I delete it. Every time.
The first measure is who it's from. I'm opening email from a friend or loved one no matter what the subject line is. From companies? That's when the subject line starts to matter. For example, I'm very active on Kiva.org but I generally only open their mails that tell me that my balance has re-passed $25 and I can make another loan. A lot of their other stuff I just bin without ever opening it.
I saw this tweet and it really made me think.
Do we get overly obsessed with measuring effectiveness of email subject lines? When really what matters is who it is from.
I think the difference is just the micro/macro context.
In the grand scheme of things, "who it is from" is more important. Over, say, 10+ emails. By that point, I'll open your emails or I won't (with a few exceptions).
For individual emails though, the subject line is important. If the sender name doesn't automatically map to "open" or "ignore", then that's all I have to go off. And if you get my to open a few of them and I like the content, then you'll soon have me mapped to a default "open".
That said, it's possible to ruin the macro effect with an overly good subject line...
If you start your email with
[important - action required] ...- then I'll definitely open it.But - if it wasn't important and action wasn't absolutely necessary - you've just lost me forever.