What I Found When I Compared 153 SaaS Email Subject Lines — Get Your SaaS On Board
Some of the most viewed posts on my site are ones I would put under the category “should and good.”
Comparing Email Cadence Across 5 SaaS Free Trials (14-Days) and How many Emails Does a 30-Day Free Trial Need? compare different onboarding series on a single topic. In the case of the two posts mentioned, I covered the frequency with which different companies sent onboarding emails. I consider these posts to be “should and good” because you can use them as a benchmark for what you “should” be doing or what a “good” number of emails is.
Today I have another “should and good” post focused on subject lines. I knew I wanted to compare at least 100 subject lines from the different onboarding email breakdowns I’ve done, so then I had to decide how to slice and dice the info.
Here’s what I decided:
- First, I’ll cover some interesting stats about the subject lines
- Then, I’ll pull out some common themes
- Finally, I’ll compare subject lines grouped by the type of email they’re associated with
Sound good? Let’s get started.
Stats From 153 SaaS Email Subject Lines
Before categorizing the subject lines, I decided to pull out some general stats. Ya know, get a lay of the land by pulling out some insightful numbers. If you want to review all 153 subject lines yourself, you can download my spreadsheet with all the subject lines + stats + insights through the original post here.
How long should SaaS email subject lines be?
The length of a subject line isn’t really something I consider until after I’ve written a few options. After I’ve chosen one, I run it through an email subject line checker to make sure it’s generally a good length.
Even though I don’t give much thought to email subject line lengths, I still thought it a useful stat to bring forward.
For the 153 subject lines I analyzed, the average character count was 36.
Not sure what that looks like? Here are a few example subject lines with 36 characters:
- It’s Time to Make Your First Invoice
- Steph, the Best Decisions Start Here
- Finish your survey fast — here’s how
There was a tie for the longest subject line of the batch, both with 66 characters.
One came from Shopify: How to drive traffic to Double Cat Studio (without paying for ads
While the other was from Monday: Hey Stephanie — build your first board, and get your team started!
Monday is not afraid of variety since they also had the shortest subject line with the three-character long “fyi.”
Sentence case vs. title case
Another tiny subject line detail that I know I’ve googled before is sentence case versus title case. For a refresher, a subject line using “sentence case” would only capitalize the first word, and then any proper nouns. Title case, on the other hand, capitalizes nearly every word.
71% of subject lines used sentence case, making it the most popular with SaaS companies.
Examples of sentence case subject lines include:
- Build your list with a little help from us
- Please confirm your email address
Title case is fairly common with 22% of the subject lines using this style.
Examples of title case subject lines include:
- Upgrade to Grammarly Premium, Become a Stronger Writer
- Activate Your Mailchimp Account
Want to really stand out? Be among the 7% of subject lines using only lower case.
Have you ever seen an all-lowercase subject line out in the wild? A few from my list include “join us for a webinar?” and “the end is coming,” both from Monday. A few other companies used lowercase at times, but this style is definitely in the minority.
At the end of the day, the best capitalization choice is one that matches your brand tone and identity. Title case is more traditional and formal, while sentence case is casual and friendly (like a message to a friend). If your brand is very relaxed and unique, then a lower case style may work best for you.
Originally published at https://www.getyoursaasonboard.com on August 1, 2019.
