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Why Are There Hearts in My Inbox?

Have you noticed that some of the emails hitting your inbox lately look a little different? More specifically, have you noticed that the subject lines are starting to look a little fancier? Many companies are playing around with inserting symbols or icons into their subject lines. We have noticed that the bigger retailers are certainly having fun these days with icons using suns, snowflakes and stars.

So, you may be wondering why businesses are using icons in their subject lines. Well, it is just a new trend in email marketing to try to boost open rates. Basically businesses are inserting icons into the subject lines in the hopes that their email will stand out next to all of the other emails that are piling up in your inbox. For right now it does seem like people are taking note of the icons in their inboxes but does it really do anything?

Well, when it comes to email marketing there are two things to think about. Do your customers open your email and then do your customers do anything with the email? Just because people open up your email (because maybe you inserted a heart or star symbol) doesn’t really mean they are more likely to buy. Inserting an icon is kinda fun or cute right now but our guess is that it is just a trend and it won’t really impact the effectiveness of email marketing too much over the long run.

If you are thinking about putting icons in your subject lines we would recommend testing it out first. First, make sure that the icons that you are using show up properly across various email platforms and on mobile devices. Also, try out the icons to only half of your email list and see if makes a difference in open and click rates. It is certainly very easy to insert these icons (most anyone can do it) so it may be worth a try if you feel that your open rates have been stagnant lately.

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