What Makes A Clickworthy Newsletter Subjectline?

With an average newsletter open rate of 30% across our hospitality clients, you could say we know a thing or two about how to create an engaging campaign. It’s worth noting that the average industry open rate for newsletters is around 20%. If you’re getting above this, you can bet it has to do with a click-worthy subject line that draws customers in.

Although creating engaging content for the inside of your newsletter is important, we’d argue that just as much thought and consideration needs to go into the subject line. What’s the value of good content if your customer never clicks through to the newsletter? Your subject line needs to stand out against the thousands of emails in your customer’s inbox, and we’re about to share the ways in which this can be done.

Things we consider when creating a subject line:

• Keep it short and sharp – You have minimal characters to get your message across which means you need to make every word count. A recent MailChimp study noted that email subject lines with 50 characters or less have 12% higher email open rates.

• Personalisation – Make your customers feel special by automating their name in the subject line – Like a wise marketing guru once said, “There’s no interest like self-interest”. We suggest doing this as a one-off so your database doesn’t get suspicious of your marketing efforts.

• Avoid key spam words – Email platforms will mark emails that include spam words in the subject line. Keep clear of words like free, click here, cash or 100%.

• Ask questions – Your customers will be immediately engaged if you ask them a question as it encourages them to click and continue the dialogue.

• Call to action – Asking your customers to do something is another great way to engage them and it also makes it very clear what the email is about.

• Urgency – People don’t like to miss out or be left behind so let them know the scarcity of the offer you’re about to share and we guarantee you’ll see more newsletter opens.

Examples of catchy subject lines to use:

General

• 3 Delicious Reasons To Visit This Week – People love lists!

• See What’s On This Summer

• Take A Look At Our New Menu

• Who’s Hungry?

• We Thought You Should Be The First To Know…

• Is It Your Turn To Book Date Night?

• Get In Quick Sydney!

• Unmissable Collab Between Two Talented Chefs

• Have You Tried Our 4 Most Popular Dishes?

Event-specific

• All I Want For Christmas Is…

• Still Looking For NYE Plans?

• Will You Be Our Valentine?

• Wine Dinner Not To Be Missed (Only 30 Tickets Left)

• You’re Invited To Our Craft Beer & Curry Night

• Wine Dinner? Wine Not!

Personalised

• Jess, Let Us Treat You This Year!

• Jess, We Heard You Love A Wine Dinner?

Other

• You’re A Winner – No one can resist finding out what they have won!

• Oops… Sorry We Made A Mistake – OOPs emails have better open rates than the original

Before we leave you with these effective subject lines to repurpose, we want to remind you that it should be your top priority to not disappoint your customers when they choose to open your newsletter. There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking through to a newsletter to find content that isn’t relevant to the subject line. This will result in unsubscribes and will significantly decrease your database size over time. ALWAYS ensure your subject line matches the content inside and your customers will love you for it.