It’s an article of faith among public relations pros that when distributing email campaigns never to put capitalized letters in the email subject line.
With apologies to the legendary author (and all-time fop), Tom Wolfe, never say never.
According to an infographic created by MailerMailer.com and MailChimp.com, using all caps in an email subject line does not automatically mean that the email is banished to a spam filter.
If anything, using caps in an email subject line might make your message stand out from the pack, and who can argue with that?
What can communicators put in their email subject lines that will boost their open rates and get their messages read?
In a 2012 study MailChimp analyzed the open rates of more than 200 million emails and came up with the following strategies. For one, short is sweet; emails with 28-39 characters in the subject line had the highest click rates. Subject lines that are framed as a question also performed better.
If you want to avoid alienating potential readers, don’t use symbols and special characters in your email. Ditto for using numbers and symbols.
Here’s the infographic, with some other nuggets on improving your email communications.
Sources: MailChimp.com and MailerMailer.com
Follow Matthew Schwartz: @mpsjourno1
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