Written by: Samantha Russell
Writing strong email subject lines is critical to every advisor’s email marketing strategy. In fact, according to Convince&Convert, 33% of people open emails based on subject lines alone, making the subject line a deciding factor in the effectiveness of your email.
How can you write open-worthy subject lines to ensure your email marketing is effective? To answer that question, we’ve examined a year’s worth of FMG email marketing data, exploring the most effective subject lines and breaking them down into 5 types to help you increase your open rates.
Email Marketing Statistics You Need to Know
We examined three metrics in our data to determine effectiveness:
- Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open a specific email out of the total recipients.
- Click-Through Rate: The percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email message.
- Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): A comparison of the above two numbers, providing a percentage representing the overall effectiveness of your message.
And here are a few finance industry averages, according to Campaign Monitor:
With these stats in mind, here are the 5 email subject line types you can use to improve your email marketing.
1. Niche-Focused Subject Lines
Why they work: These subject lines build curiosity by focusing on a topic your audience is invested in and giving it a twist by hinting at new information.
Here are some examples from FMG:
2. Question Subject Lines
Why they work: These subject lines are effective because they get the reader to examine their own knowledge gaps, while implying a solution. Like our first type, this subject line plays off curiosity but is simple to execute, so try to do it sparingly.
Examples from FMG:
3. List Subject Lines
Why they work: Subject lines that imply the use of data or the organization of it often receive positive responses because they set specific expectations. If you’re using a stat, report, or list, be as exact as possible and include or imply the benefit of the information you provide.
Examples from FMG:
4. Expert Advice Subject Lines
Why they work: Clients and prospects turn to you for your expertise. These subject lines are effective because they tap into your expertise in bite-sized portions that readers can easily apply on their own.
Examples from FMG:
5. Personalized Subject Lines
Why they work: Personalization is the key to effective advisor marketing, but not everything needs to be business related. Friendly messages like these go a long way in building and retaining clients and prospects by showing them that you’re aware of the moments that are important to them.
Examples from FMG:
Wrapping It Up
Financial advisors work hard to improve their email marketing strategy to find the most effective and efficient way to communicate with prospects and clients. Just keep in mind that each subject line type fits specific emails, they’re not a one-size-fits-all, so you will want to use the one that best fits the situation.