Increase the open rates of your marketing emails by establishing credibility and developing creative and compelling subject lines, with the help of advice from the Entrepreneur.com article “”Email 101: How to Write Better Subject Lines.” Catchy subject lines are one of the most important aspects of a good email blast, but earning the trust and recognition of readers is perhaps even more vital. Use these suggestions to improve creativity as well as credibility:

1. Earn trust from your audience first – then get creative. Who is sending the email is always more important than the subject line – no matter how catchy it is. To develop credibility, send only useful and timely emails and make sure the same sender name is used every time. To keep customers opening your messages time after time, you’ll need to provide value – whether it’s financial or informational – every time. You also need to ensure that your subject lines align with your level of trust. If you haven’t established much credibility yet, you’re probably better off sticking to straightforward subject lines that tell the reader specifically what they’re going to get from the message. Once you’ve established the trust that anything coming from your name will be worth opening, you can get more creative to really boost the open rate.
2. Play to your audience. Keep in mind that you are not necessarily your target audience. A subject line that appeals to you might not be interesting to your primary segment of customers. Even better, try segmenting your email lists by age, location and other factors to you can better tailor the types of emails and subject lines.
3. Don’t guess. Test. Before sending a blast to your entire email list, test the efficacy of different subject lines by sending the same email with various subject lines to small portions of the list. Also, continually monitor open rates to find out what works and what doesn’t so you can make your subject lines more efficient over time.

Click here to read the entire article from Entrepreneur.com.