There is no industry open rate left to beat. Since Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection, mail opened in the Apple Mail app loads the tracking image whether or not a person reads a word of it, so the number in your email tool is counting machines alongside people.
That matters more than any subject line formula, because it means the target you were writing towards has stopped existing. What is left is a simpler question: does this subject line tell the recipient what the message is, in words they will believe.
What Mail Privacy Protection did to the number
Apple’s mail app pre-loads remote images through a proxy server, on delivery, without the recipient opening anything. Tracking pixels are remote images. So for a large share of a typical list, an open is recorded because the mail arrived.
Corporate security scanners have done something similar for years, opening links and images to check them before a human sees the message. Between the two, open rate went up across the board and stopped meaning what it used to mean.
The published benchmark tables have a second problem on top of that: they average across industries, list ages and sending habits that have nothing in common with a plumbing firm mailing four hundred previous customers. Nobody can honestly tell you what a good open rate is for your trade in your region.
What to watch instead
- Replies. A human wrote back. Nothing automated does that.
- Calls in the hours after a send. Crude, and the most honest signal a contractor has. Note the time you sent and watch the phone.
- Bookings you can attribute. A reminder that produces a service visit is worth more than a thousand recorded opens.
- Clicks, with a caveat. Scanners click too. A click with no page behaviour after it is a machine, not a customer.
- Unsubscribes and complaints. The downside measure, and the one people avoid looking at. It is the number that tells you when you are sending too much.
The subject line’s actual job for a trade
It is a label, not a hook. The recipient is deciding whether this is a message from a business they hired or a piece of marketing from a stranger, and they decide in about a second.
Curiosity gaps work once. “You won’t believe what we found” from a plumber reads as a scam or a sales trick, and the person who opens it and finds a promotion has learned to skip you next time. That lesson is very hard to unteach.
The subjects that do well for a trade are almost boringly plain: your boiler service is due in March, your quote for the bathroom, we’ll be on your street on Tuesday, the part for your repair has arrived. Each one says what the message contains and each one is about the recipient’s house rather than about your business, which is the same principle behind what is worth sending at all.
The sender name does more work than the subject
People read the sender first. Use the business name they would recognise from the van and the invoice: not “Marketing Team”, not an unfamiliar first name, and not a name you changed since they last used you.
If your company trades under a name different from the one on the paperwork, put both. A recipient who cannot place you does not investigate; they delete.
What to avoid, and why
- False urgency. “Final notice” on a marketing email trains people to disbelieve the one that really is a final notice.
- Fake threads. Starting a subject with Re: or Fwd: when there was no thread is a trick, and homeowners recognise it.
- Capitals and stacked exclamation marks. They read as a scam in a trade context, whatever they do elsewhere.
- An offer the body does not contain. The fastest way to lose a customer’s attention permanently.
- Manufactured intimacy. “Are you still there?” from a company that installed a boiler is not charming.
Text messages have no subject line
What they have is the first few words in the notification, and those words have to contain your business name. An unrecognised number saying “your appointment is confirmed” reads as fraud, because that is exactly what fraud looks like now.
Lead with who you are, then what it is about. You have lost nothing by spending four words on it.
Testing when the list is small
Split-testing a subject across three hundred recipients will give you an answer, and the answer will be noise. The arithmetic behind that is the same one that defeats most contractor A/B tests, and it does not get kinder for email.
Judge subject lines the slow way: keep a note of what you sent and what came back, and look across a quarter. Ten sends with honest notes beat one test with a confident percentage.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good open rate for a contractor?
Nobody can tell you honestly, because privacy features record opens that never happened. Watch replies, calls after a send, and bookings instead, and compare your own sends against each other rather than against a published average.
Should I use emoji in subject lines?
Generally not. For a trade they undercut the impression you are trying to make, which is that you are a real business with a licence and a van, not a shop running a sale.
Does putting someone’s name in the subject help?
Barely, and it is now common enough to read as automated. What actually lands is naming the thing you did at their house: the appliance, the room, the date, which comes out of your job records rather than your contact list.
How long should a subject line be?
Short enough to read whole in a phone notification, with the meaningful words at the front. If the only way to know what the message is about is to open it, the subject line has not done its job.
Where to start
Take your last ten sends and write down, next to each, whether anyone replied or rang. That list will tell you more about what your customers respond to than the open rate column ever will, and it takes twenty minutes.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our email and text message marketing or book a strategy call.
