According to recent research, 33% of people open emails based on the subject line alone and 68% decide to open based on the 'From' name. Most people spend hours of their time crafting the perfect content for their emails, neglecting these two important factors that can prevent all of that hard work from ever being seen. The truth is that people decide in seconds whether or not they will open that email you spent days working on. Subject lines, sender names and even preheader text (the preview of our email that gets displayed in our email client) all matter significantly. In general, short, clear and direct subject lines perform best for most industries. Vague, overly long, or boring subject lines kill open rates.
In some cases, a poorly chosen subject line or sender name can go beyond merely just being dull or ineffective and actually end up being rude, shocking or offensive. How so? Well, on mobile devices, subject lines and sender names are truncated. This can occasionally lead to some truly disastrous results. And mobile matters, a lot. More than half of emails are first opened on a mobile device. TL/DR: It is absolutely critical that your subject line reads well on all devices.
We're no stranger to emails here at ZURB. We've been spending a lot of time studying every facet of email and email delivery as we put the finishing touches on Foundation for Emails 2, a responsive framework for crafting HTML emails. This very framework was born out of our own needs ' we send thousands of emails every day. Foundation for Emails helps us speed up our process by drastically cutting down on development time and ensuring that our emails are fully responsive so they look great on any device.
But while we have a groundbreaking tool for developing amazing and beautiful emails, all of that hard work could be foiled by a subject line blunder. That got us thinking ... there had to be a way to quickly test out what our subject lines, sender names and preheader text looked like on the most popular mobile devices.
Sure, there are top notch paid services for testing and previewing emails on different devices, email clients and operating systems, and we are huge fans of them. But sometimes you need something quick and easy that you can test on while you're still crafting the content, without the need to go through the whole process of coding up the email.
Meet TestSubject, our latest Playground resource. TestSubject is a simple, free and easy to use tool to get a quick snapshot of what your email subject line, sender name and preheader text will look like on the most popular mobile devices. Simply copy and paste your content in and you'll get an instant preview. Avoid embarrassing gaffes and blunders, and make sure you've got a compelling message that gets people opening your message and reading your content. Using this tool will help you visualize how your subject line, sender name, and preheader text can better work together to get your email opened.
Visit the ZURB Playground and give a try!
New ZURB Master Class: Responsive Email
We've compiled all of our knowledge and insights on responsive HTML emails in a new online video course! Master responsive email by learning how to rapidly design and develop responsive emails that are on-message and display well on just about every screen, browser, and email client out there ' even Outlook.