Your mother may have told you not to judge a book by its cover. But when it comes to emails, that’s exactly what people do. Inboxes today are flooded with emails, and subject lines help consumers determine whether an email gets read, saved for later or trashed. That’s why it’s important to create subject lines for your email campaigns that stand out from the crowd and catch renters’ attention. After all, you could be sending out the greatest email campaign ever, but if no one opens it, it really doesn’t matter.

Want to create more effective subject lines that stand out and entice readers to open your emails? Read on for a six simple tips that can help.

Keep Key Words to the Front
Remember that many people are reading your emails on their mobile devices. And most mobile devices will cut off subject lines at around 40-50 characters – that’s just a few words! So be sure to “front load” your subject lines by putting the most important information at the beginning.

Be Transparent 
It seems obvious, but your subject line should give readers an idea of what they can expect from your email. If readers feel like your email subject line was in any way misleading, they’re far less likely to open your emails in the future.

Make it Personal
Who wants to read an email that sounds like it’s been blasted to a million random people? Consider using words like “you” or “your” in the subject line to make the email sound inviting and personal. Or, consider including your location or community name in the subject line, for example “A special from Greenway Apartments” or “10 Free Summer Activities in Elm Grove.”

Avoid Spam Filters
Certain email practices – such as using all capital letters and lots of exclamation points - can increase the likelihood that your emails will end up in recipients’ spam or junk mail folders. There are also certain trigger words that can doom your email. Take a peak in your junk mail folder to get a sampling of these trigger words, including:

• Free
• Buy
• Cost
• Cheap
• Urgent
• Earn
• $

Test Different Subject Lines
You can follow all the best practices in the world, but the only real way to see what subject lines will perform best is to do an A/B or split test. Set up two variations of your email campaign (same email content with different subject lines) and send to a small portion of your total list of recipients. Half of the test group will get the email with subject line A and the other half gets the email with subject line B. Then, whichever version gets the most opens and click throughs can be sent to the rest of your list. Many email marketing solutions like ExactTarget have features that make the A/B test process easy.

Think About Your Own Inbox
Which subject lines have caught your eye lately? And which ones have made you immediately hit “delete.” Think about some great subject lines you've seen in your own inbox and how you might adapt them for your own emails.

What are some great subject lines you've seen recently?