Subject Lines Should be 50 or 80 Characters Long, Nowhere in Between

Make sure that your e-mail subject lines are around 50 characters long, or 80 characters long, but not 60 or 70 characters long. This is the recommendation that Dela Quist, CEO of e-mail marketing agency Alchemy Worx has found from his study of e-mail analytics.

Quist observed a “sweet spot” when subject lines are in the 50-character range or 80-character range. These ranges garnered higher open rates, though they fell when subject lines fell into the 60- or70-character range.

Subject lines with lengths in the 50-character range tended to be appealing because of the “powerful” offers pushed, while subject lines with lengths in the 80-character range offered marketers more chances to appeal to different sets of consumers, thus increasing open rates.

Sixty- to 70-character subject lines seemed to be perceived as either too long or not long enough.

The notion that longer subject lines could prove more effective seems to go against conventional wisdom, according to Quist.

His research was based upon studying more than 250 million e-mail messages sent over the past two years, with 660 different subject lines.

Source:
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