Content Design: Email Subject Lines
~3 min read | Sep 25, 2023
Visual design for email is only half of the battle. As a designer, I’ve primarily focused on the visual design aspect of an email. I’ve had goals of designing compelling marketing visuals which try to entice customers to click through to shop on an eCommerce platform. I’ve designed transactional emails that strive to clearly communicate valuable information about a purchase to existing customers. I’ve designed post purchase emails designed to help existing customers with items they’ve already purchased.
In all of these instances my focus has been designing visual experiences that users engage with after clicking on an item in their inbox. That item, the subject line and preheader, shouldn’t be overlooked in terms of its importance. After all, if the subject line doesn’t intrigue the user or provide any useful information, the user is less likely to actually open the email and see any of its contents.
I’m currently working as a consultant for a Fortune 500 company that is revamping its customer facing communications. I’m helping to update their transactional email communications, SMS communications, and push notifications.
The business had goals of improving the customers’ post purchase experience, including being clearer about delivery time frames, being more communicative and transparent about delivery delays, and increasing the amount of communications sent to close gaps in the user journey.
The business had received feedback from customers that they were frustrated by a number of things, including not being made aware of the status of their delivery, and not being clear on why their orders were delayed or rescheduled.
In order to alleviate some of these frustrations, the user experience team was tasked with updating how the brand speaks to customers through these communications.
This was a large undertaking since there were over one hundred emails including various different scenarios to account for. I also had to account for the fact that there would not be one individual person creating emails in the future. Multiple different teams and team members would be creating emails themselves, so there were issues of governance as well as standardization. In order to maintain a degree of standardization for subject lines, I recommended implementing content strings. These strings would provide guidance for team members when creating new content. The strings look like this:
{introduction/greeting} + {Firstname,} + {order status.} + {order number}
{Great news} {Jane,} {we’re on our way with your order.} {Order #12345678901}
or
{emoji} + {introduction} + {order status.} + {order number}
{✅} {Great news,} {we’re on our way with your order.} {Order #12345678901}
The business also found that customers were more receptive to action-oriented language. So instead of writing in a passive tone, all communications should convey either an action being taken by the business or an action that needs to be taken by the customer.
An example of passive tone vs. active tone looks like:
“Your delivery was rescheduled” vs. “We had to reschedule your delivery”
As part of this overhaul, I recommended A/B testing a few things including:
∙ Subject line phrasing
∙ Capitalization
∙ Emoji type
By gathering data on how real customers engage with the emails, we can see whether the initial findings, done with a small group of potential customers, are valid.
Since the business has two distinct types of users, I also suggested segmenting the tests depending on user type. These two groups likely interact with the business differently.
With a format for the subject lines established, similar content string formatting can be used for SMS comms and push notifications.
The most important takeaways for me when working on this project were that:
1. Having a strategy before starting work is important 2. Testing with actual users/customers provides some of the most valuable data. 3. Not all user feedback should be acted on. 4. Being able to explain decisions to stakeholders and having open communications with stakeholders is as important as any other task. Without being in alignment with stakeholders, a project can get stuck in limbo.
Without a successful subject line, customers may never even open an email. The next time you’re working on improving your email campaigns regardless of whether it’s for marketing or transactional, make sure not to neglect the subject lines.
And as a side note: I found that leveraging AI, ChatGPT specifically, was helpful in brainstorming variations on ideas, and changing the tone of a message.