Worry less about your subject lines

Silverpop, an email marketing firm, recently did a study of subject lines and open rates. The research didn’t get off the ground, because initial data showed the subject line didn’t affect the open rate. What Silverpop did find was that the “from” email did materially affect open rates.

The fact that the subject line didn’t affect open rates is a bit surprising, but the bit about the “from” email isn’t at all surprising. When I’m scanning through my email, the from email is the first thing I look at. You can kill an email by having it come from info@ or marketing@. Perhaps your organizations name should be the from email. If your constituents are particularly connected to your church or ministry leader and email communications come from him or her, then his or her name might be a good fit.

Don’t go crazy with the “from” name. Emails from your organization should come from one or two email addresses and names, any more than that and your constituents aren’t going to necessarily connect the latest email from the director of marketing as being from your church or ministry.

This also doesn’t bode well for churches and ministries doing list rental. The initial research would say, because they don’t know who you are, they aren’t going to open the email.

All hope is not lost, perhaps the best bet would be to partner with the list owner to put an ad or do a guest spot somehow. This has the added bonus of following permission marketing best practices.

I wouldn’t just forget about subject lines all together, but get your “from” address in order first.