What’s your best 50 character pickup line?

50 characters. That’s all it takes to make or break your email campaign. I guess that’s why they say the subject line of an email is the most important element of the entire campaign. Think of it as a pickup line. The first few words out of your mouth can make or break your chances for a date. Too much pressure? Here are 5 great resources, your wingmen, to help you land that first date (that leads to a great relationship, of course):

1. Email Marketing Subject Line Comparison by MailChimp: MailChimp is an email marketing service that also has an awesome resource tab complete with free email marketing guides and articles. This particular article includes interesting findings from a study where they analyzed 40 million emails and found the ones with the highest and lowest open rates.

Main takeaway? To achieve the highest open rates, the subject lines should be straightforward, describe the subject of your email, and not scream advertisement. As “stupid simple” as it may seem, I think they hit the nail on the head.

2. Email Subject Line: 15 rules to Write Them Right by Lyris: Lyris is another email marketing service that has a superb list of email marketing resources. My personal favorites include their white papers and webinars. This white paper lays out 15 rules that every marketer should know about writing subject lines, aka the “tricky little devils”.

My favorite rule? Rule #3: Test, test, test.

3. E-Mail Subject Lines: Beyond the Basics by Gail Goodman from Entrepreneur.com: Being a guru in email marketing with a ridiculous track record, Gail Goodman also finds time to be Entrepreneur.com’s “Email Marketing coach”. As you may know, Entrepreneur.com is a useful marketing resource in itself, but in particular, Gail has written some awesome material. Although it’s an older article, it’s a short and sweet way to teach marketing interns or entry-level marketers how to make subject lines more “powerful and compelling”.

Of the 5 points, I would have to say #4: Remember “WIIFM”, really drives it home.

4. Email Subject Lines: Words, Order as Critical as Length by Sean Donahue from Sherpa Blog: If you don’t know MarketingSherpa, you should. Although MarketingSherpa does require a membership (try the free trial) in order to read some of their full articles, their blog is a free, helpful resource! This Sherpa blog post summarizes the findings of a white paper by Epsilon who analyzed subject lines to “determine the influence of length, word order and content on open rates and clicks”.

In a nutshell, keeping your subject line short isn’t everything, you also need to pay attention to word choice and word placement.

5. Optimizing Headlines and Subject Lines by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin from Marketing Experiments: If you are someone who loves presentations and PowerPoints, this is the resource for you. Marketing Experiments is a free resource that specializes in marketing communications research and experiments, hence the name. Although optimizing headlines is an important know-how as well, since we’re focusing on optimizing subject lines, I would skip to slide #13 of the PowerPoint.

This presentation is super neat because it explains the step by step process in which different subject lines can be tested to produce the highest open rate.

Fool-proof pickup lines don’t exist. Similarly, there is no “right” way to write a “successful” subject line. Even your flawless marketing mentor (yeah, right) doesn’t have the golden touch. Writing a subject line that proves optimal results is an art, and with every art form, it takes practice and learning from mistakes. If there is one thing I wanted you to takeaway from this post, it would have to be the importance of testing. Ideally try A/B split testing, which will be a future blog post.