Despite the growing popularity of social media and other promotional channels, email continues to be the leading driver of webinar registrations, representing 53% of all sign ups — more than social media, partner promotions, and banners combined.
As the all-important first impression of your content, the subject line of your email is the first opportunity for your potential audience to evaluate your webinar before any visual clues are provided.
But how do you write one that successfully captures attention and communicates the value of opening the email?
While a shorter subject line is generally better, a subject line split into strong pieces can also work. For example, “Moving to the Cloud – Why These 5 Companies Took the Plunge,” is longer than the recommended 35 characters but still easy to read because of its separate pieces.
However, keeping subject lines short ensures that they will be seen in their entirety in the viewer’s inbox, especially on mobile devices.
35% of people open an email based on the subject line alone (Convince & Convert).
Interested in testing a new subject line? Try one of these ideas:
- Including a well-known speaker’s name in the subject line can increase open and click-through rates, as some presenters have built a personal brand around delivering excellent webinars, so take advantage of the celebrity status if your speaker has it.
- Front-loading subject lines with keywords has proven effective in capturing audience interest. For example, “Cloud Services: Planning, Changing and Running Your Portfolio” performs better than “Planning, Changing and Running Your Portfolio of Cloud Services.”
- By framing your subject line in the form of a question, you can leverage basic psychology tactics and earn higher open rates by piquing the reader’s curiosity and getting them interested in the value your content offers.
- Creating a sense of urgency is a tactic that can be used in some (not all) emails to boost open rates by making your message appear time-sensitive and important. In fact, Sidekick found that emails with the word “tomorrow” in the subject line were opened 10% more than those without.
