We were having a drink with a fellow marketer a few days ago at a networking event. He said he’s been talking to a few email marketers who insist that leaving the subject line blank is the way to go when sending emails to customers. He said it encourages them to actually read the email to see what it’s about, rather than just deleting it.
But we are not convinced that’s the way to go and think it perhaps might appear a bit spammy and probably goes into the junk/spam folder more often.
So – we thought we’d ask some other UK marketers their thoughts on the biggest LinkedIn professional marketing group “UK Marketing Lounge”. And boy, did we open a can of worms!
Below is a selection of the many mixed opinions we received. What do you think? If you are a business owner have you used a blank email to good effect? If you are a recipient, does it annoy you when the subject box is left blank or does it intrigue you?
No way. It has a hint of spam, leaves a bad taste… black-hat tactics. Its no way to build a relationship with a customer, apart from a negative one
To settle the argument, send the same e-mail two lots of sample data and measure the opens and click throughs – one with a subject line and one without a subject line. Marketing is about experimentation.
Spam filters would give minus points to lack of subject line and combined with the unsubscribe link in the email would ditch it … so not a good idea but experiments can be fun and as sure as eggs is eggs … what works today is spam / dull tomorrow as a new idea hits the in box. So, give it a go but don’t delay!
I tend to go with something provoking. I ran a campaign with a subject line ‘Pink and meaty’ which got a 78% open rate!
If having opened the email the content is underwhelming it sits uncomfortably that you were fooled in to opening an email only to be highly disappointed.
It depends on the relationship with your customers. If the customer base is small and you are well known to your customers and simply want to communicate a message, I’d say its ok. Also depends on the content and how the email is created whether its listed as spam. If its larger and you are actively selling something and you are planning on tricking them into opening probably not. But, I agree with some on here – it’s about testing, testing, testing.
Interesting question, my gut instinct would be that it’s a bad idea, but I’d love to see some proper A/B testing as suggested above.
Spammers send billions of junk emails everyday and will undoubtedly try every trick they can to get their emails read, yet looking through the last 900 odd spam emails in my spam folder, not one had a blank subject line (the closest was “RE: “), so what does that perhaps tell us?