While your headline only represents a small portion of your email, blog, or post, it has the potential to make or break it.
After analyzing numerous A/B tests of email campaign subject lines, it clear that subject lines with a higher a emotional marketing value (EMV) perform better.
Emotional headlines stem from emotional marketing. Our vocabulary has varying harmonics that can create very predictable emotional responses. Marketers can leverage this to create better messaging.
There are several type of emotional headlines:
- Intellectual – headlines that appeal to reason or logic
- Empathetic – headlines that demand a strong emotional response
- Spiritual – headlines that draw the deepest emotional level
Most professional copywriters have 30%-40% EMV words in their headlines and the very best will have 50%-75% EMV words.
AAF-Cedar Valley was able to triple their open rates in part by implementing emotional headlines and tons of A/B testing. (Note there are a ton of variables at play here including: segmenting, emojis, time of day/week, frequency, quality content, length, etc.)
Here are a few of our A/B tests with varying headlines:
| Headline | % EMV Words | Open Rate |
| Happy New Year From AAF Cedar Valley | 57.1% | 50.0% |
| Start the New Year Off Right! | 33.33% | 37.9% |
| Headline | % EMV Words | Open Rate |
| How Well Do You Know Advertising? | 33.3% | 39.4% |
| Ending Soon: Sign Up for AdWars V | 28.6% | 30.3% |
| Headline | % EMV Words | Open Rate |
| You Won’t Want to Miss Our First Event of the Season! | 54.6% | 22.0% |
| Is Your Agency the Best at Giant Jenga? | 12.5% | 16.7% |
I’ve found that the headline with the highest EMV doesn’t always win, this is especially true when two headlines are within a few points of each other. However, more often then not, the subject line with the higher emotional value tends to outperform.
Next time you are creating an email campaign or titling a blog post check the EMV percentage and see if you content performs better.
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