Don’t Overlook Your Email Intro Lines

Those first 2 to 3 lines of copy in your emails can be just as crucial as your subject line.

If you’re like most organizations, every penny of your marketing budget has to show ROI these days. Chances are you and your “wordsmithing” team spends hours agonizing over the length, tone and design of your email subject lines. And you should. Numerous studies show subject lines really do influence whether or not your email gets read. According to Convince& Convert, 33 percent of email recipients open email based on subject line alone and nearly 70 percent report email as spam based solely on the subject line.

But, don’t forget about the intro lines that follow your subject line. Doing so is like revving your car’s engine in the driveway, but forgetting to disengage the emergency brake. In other words, lots of wasted gas and energy just to be spinning your wheels.

Okay. Your killer subject line got the reader’s attending. Now what?

Intro lines are those all-important two or three lines of text that users see immediately after opening your email.

Intro lines are even more important for mobile users since subject lines are typically cut off for mobile users. According to Incentivibe, which specializes in shared giveaways for business, marketers should use the intro line to hammer home the offer and the benefit in 65 to 85 words. That’s long enough to convey your message and call to action, but not too long to lose your recipients’ interest.

Getting ‘inactives’ re-engaged

Like most B2B marketers, you probably have tons of inactive subscribers on your lists and keeping those folks on your list is certainly not helping your deliverability stats. Some of you are probably trying to re-engage your “inactives” from time to time, but sending a once-a-year “we want you back” email does little good, according to digital marketing company, Silverpop. Experts say that’s waiting way too long.

It’s better to identify your inactive subscribers and cull them out after a few months of inactivity. But instead of deep-sixing them entirely, put them on a separate “activation track” in which you try to engage them by sending different types of content than you’d send your main list.

EXAMPLE: Ask your inactive subscribers to update their preferences in one email and send a survey of white paper in the next. Also try to find out why they’re inactive. Are there any patterns? See if your inactives fall into a particular demographic group, geographic group or industry category. See if they tend to come from one or two activation sources. Those are red flags that savvy B2B marketers will remedy ASAP.

There’s no substitute for a snappy, relevant subject line, but no matter how clever your marketing team is, if they don’t follow it up with a relevant intro line, you’re like a baseball team that keeps getting runners in scoring position, but can’t them home to home plate where it counts on the scoreboard. With 82 percent of marketers planning to increase their investment in mobile this year (Source: American Marketing Association and Aquent poll of U.S. marketing professionals), can you afford email copy that’s not optimized for your on-the-go clients and prospects?

The Free Resources section of our website has more on this topic.

Stay smart and don’t be an email tease. If you grabbed your audience with a snappy subject line, make sure you deliver on what you promised. Doing so consistently will earn you loyal followers and advocates for years to come. But being an email tease will get you on the “opt out” list faster than you can say CAN SPAM.

Conclusion

By the way, if you think email is going the way of Kodak, Blockbuster Video and yellow cabs, think again. You are 6 times more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet (Source: Campaign Monitor) and email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter (Source: McKinsey). Hmmmm.

TAGS:  email intro lines, better email engagement

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