Subject lines are the first thing seen by someone when they open their inbox, and as such are one of the most important elements of any email campaign – possibly the single most influential part of any email. Here’s some pointers on how to get it just right:

• Who needs Subject Lines…? – a clever strategy from Southwest Airlines
• Straight Talk on Subject Lines – four essential points to note
• Thoughts on email subject lines – what’s compelling – and why?
• Email Marketing Minute – “Subject Line Special Characters”
• Subject lines: Amazon’s lessons on discounts and frontloading – stats, analysis, and conclusions
• 7 fixes for terrible subject lines – dos and don’ts from iMediaConnection.com

The Wall Street Journal posted an article this week with the title “Why Email No Longer Rules… And what that means for the way we communicate“¹. In all honesty, this is — as you may have predicted — not true; at least as discussed by many of the prominent bloggers out there. This isn’t the first time the death of email has been predicted, and I’m certain it won’t be the last.

This week’s special mention goes to a post by Neil Schwartzman, Spamfighter.com are Spammers (reached via laura on Word to the Wise). An interesting tale of how not to deal with customers – made even more wince-worthy by the comments from the CEO of SPAMfighter.com below the post.

¹ This may be a little geeky, but can I say, what the hell is up with WSJ’s URLs? Ye gods, people, this isn’t 1995! How are we supposed to take advice on the latest forefronts of technology from a company that can’t even translate SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html into something a little more friendly?

Along with the usual scatter of subjects covered this week in the blogosphere, one topic covered in more detail than most has been how to create effective copy for your email marketing campaigns – including subject lines, thank you pages, and of course, the main body of an email.

Here’s a few links to some of the more interesting articles on the subject:

• Short Or Long Copy In Newsletters: What’s The Smart Choice?
• Writing Compelling Email Marketing Copy
• Subject lines: Amazon’s lessons on personalization
• The Thank You Page Done Right
• What’s In A Welcome? 45 Welcome Emails From Top Retailers

There’s also been some interesting discussion on the topic of renting or buying lists of email addresses. Top of our list of email marketing recommendations, is of course, “Don’t steal (do not buy/rent/sell lists)”, and it seems that most of the industry more than agrees with this point of view.

It’s all about permission marketing, people: you can achieve much higher overall response rates with less expensive investments of time and money.