"Help" is no help in e-mail subject lines: MailChimp

E-mail marketing firm MailChimp has found that the words "help," "percent off" and "reminder" are far from ideal for use in e-mail subject lines.

A study conducted by Atlanta-based MailChimp looked at 200 million e-mails sent by the firm's clients, and found that wording is key to getting consumers to open their e-mail.

The study's report noted that most consumers do not respond to the word "help," because the word is often used in Nigerian spam messages that consumers are used to receiving.

In addition, e-mails with the term "percentage off" are not opened very often. Even if a mailer is sending an offer, consumers do not respond well to this kind of sales-centric language.

The report also pointed out that the word "reminder" in the subject line is a word that consumers do not respond to. Instead, the report found that e-mails using words that describe the actual content tended to be opened more often than those that do not.