Did you know an email’s subject line is its most significant element? They are the deciding factor in whether or not your email is read, deleted, or marked as spam.
An email subject line influences the decision of 33.90% of recipients to open the message. Even though they are only a minor component of your email, email subject lines often serve as the first impression you make on your consumers. They are the key to getting your marketing message seen in an overflowing inbox.
Even more valuable than the email body, these 40-character snippets are the unsung heroes of email marketing. That is why it is vital to write attention-grabbing email subject lines that prompt readers to take action.
Table of Contents
Why Place Importance on Email Subject Lines?
In today’s fast-paced corporate world, getting an overwhelming number of emails is not unusual. Everyone’s mailbox is flooded with emails from potential customers and media connections, all vying for the recipient’s attention. Even yet, just around 34% of US and UK marketers employ customization in email subject lines (Adobe, 2020).
Most consumers spend just a few milliseconds scanning email subject lines for keywords to choose which emails to delete and which to keep. Even if you compose an email with the best tips and your email’s main body contains information that is essential and beneficial to the recipient’s company, they will ignore it if the subject line fails to grab their attention.
When you consider that a brief, one-line overview of your email can be your first and sole chance at interacting with a consumer or business contact, the significance of email subject lines grows even more apparent.
What Does a Proper Email Subject Line Consist?
First, let us cover the basics of a compelling email subject line. Regardless of the objectives you want to accomplish, the following components should always be included in the subject line of your email:
1. Urgency
Motivating recipients to take action helps instill a feeling of urgency. A 22% increase in open rates may be achieved by adding urgency or an exclusive offer to email subject lines.
Customers casually browsing their inboxes are more likely to click on a promotion or offer if they know exactly when it will begin and stop.
As long as you are not overwhelming their mailbox and coming across as pushy, this is also a solid strategy when done in a brief series of emails counted down the opportunity window.
2. Personalization
CTR grows by 50% when the subject lines are personalized. Each of your email subscribers is unique, and because of this, the emails you send to customers should not always follow a single template.
There has never been a time when marketers have had access to more means to study their members’ occupations, email addresses and social media handle details than they have right now.
Therefore, when you provide them with information on occasion, make sure that it is personalized for each of them.
3. Maintain Simplicity
For email subject lines, less is more. The less you say, the more your potential customers will worry whether there is anything more you are not saying.
If the subject line of an email is too lengthy, it may be cropped, especially on mobile devices. Since up to 46% of all email openings occur on mobile devices, it is important to keep subject lines short (less than 50 characters) to ensure that recipients just skimming your emails will read what you have to say.
The fact that writing short subject lines is challenging provides an additional incentive for savvy salesmen to make an effort to do so. Your brief, snappy subject line will be spotted in an inbox full of newsletters, discounts, and random messages from peers.
Strategies for Writing Effective Email Subject Lines
These are the tried-and-tested best practices you need to use while drafting a subject line:
1. Offers
This is when the value of reading a particular email message becomes apparent. People and businesses are always up for trying anything new and are much more receptive to trying something at a discounted rate.
Start with it by putting it in the subject line of your email. When an offer or reference for a discount is explicitly stated in the email subject line, readers are much more tempted to open it.
2. Fame and Publicity
Everyone has well-known individuals whom they have looked up to and respected at some time in their lives. It might be anybody from a successful celebrity to an influential businessman. And once you understand the preferences and interests of your audience, you will be able to grasp their attention by incorporating the names of respected and well-known individuals.
You can include these people in your content and mention them in your email subject lines. Be aware, however, that for this strategy to be successful, it must be congruent with the business, offering, or product you provide. Therefore, it is important to keep it relevant instead of simply mentioning a name for the purpose of being recognized.
3. Significance and Suitability
When consumers sign up for email newsletters, it is most often because they wish to be kept in the loop or, at the very least, get further knowledge about a certain subject.
Composing email subject lines that contain trending themes or topical headlines may help you build your brand as an expert within your field and can urge people to click through to learn more.
This tactic is analogous to capturing the interest of your audience by drawing their attention to something that may be of interest to them.
4. Use a Known Sender Identity
As discussed above, the concept of “name recognition” is not limited to the well-known but also encompasses the familiar. Use a name that sounds as close to human as possible while sending messages. That way, when individuals open their inboxes, they will see an email from you that is both friendly and approachable.
You should sign your name as the sender even though the email is officially coming from the firm if you have previously met the recipients. For instance, if you are from the sales team and following up via email on a B2B deal after meeting the client. The person, not the company as a whole, is the best image you can provide to your consumers at this stage.
People are too busy to talk to you if you do not seem like you could strike up a pleasant chat with them.
5. Never Fail to Experiment
If you are struggling to develop a good subject line for an email, maybe the issue is that you are overwhelmed with ideas. Nobody said your imagination had to be confined to a single idea, so why not split assess your subject lines?
If you want to start exercising your imagination, try writing down ten alternative email subject lines for a single email. This will offer you a variety of options from which to choose. You may A/B test not just the body of your emails but also the subject you compose using automation tools.
Select your top two, copy and paste them into the program, and monitor the outcomes. Analyze both the winning line and the loser. Make notes on what you analyzed went well and what you should steer clear of during the next round.
6. Segment your Email Lists
Email blasts sent to everyone on your list could be useful and interesting to some, but they will likely be of little interest or value to others and may even annoy them.
Personalize the service based on the consumers’ past interactions with your company, such as the kind of forms they have completed and their individual interests.
Simply by dividing your email list into subgroups, you may send each group a message tailored specifically to their interests.
7. Use Action-Oriented Verbs
You want the words in the subject line to motivate individuals to click, just as you would with a call to action. Emails with subject lines that start with action verbs are more likely to be opened, so try using one to increase the click-through rate.
By creating a sense of urgency and anticipation, actionable subject lines increase the likelihood that your email will be opened.
8. Pose an Intriguing Question
Including a question in the subject line of your email is another effective way to attract your readers’ attention, particularly if the query is one that you are aware is pertinent to the buyer persona of your recipients.
This is simply one approach to stimulate the interest of the readers. You may, for instance, attempt the following: “Are you structuring your blogs the wrong way?” or “Are you using this SEO strategy but still falling short?” Play with the curiosity of your recipients and boost your clickthroughs.
9. Use Enticing Overview Text
Even though the preview text is not part of your email subject line, it appears quite close to the subject line and should be given due consideration.
Email programs like the Apple Mail app, Gmail, and Microsoft Outlook will show the preview text beneath the subject line to give the recipient a sneak peek at the content of your email. How much text is shown is determined by the user’s email client and preferences determine how much text is shown.
Without a custom setting for the preview text, the email program will take the first few sentences from the message body. Depending on the information you have included in your email, this might come off as disorganized and would be a missed chance to connect with your readers.
Tips for Creating Effective Email Subject Lines
After knowing the do’s and dont’s of email subject lines, how do you actually write one? Let us look at some points below:
1. Determine the Reason for Sending the Email
What is the purpose of sending the email, and how does it factor into selecting the subject line? To develop a good concept for the email’s subject line, you should first determine the real goal or objective and then utilize that as the basis for your brainstorming.
2. Find Your CTA
What about the email that will inspire the recipient to want to click on it? Is there a coupon? discount offer? Do you have any important information? What about your offer is so alluring that it compels others to check it out or find out more? It is tempting to have a call for action when there is a reward that has not yet been revealed.
3. Draft Alternative Subject Lines
Create subject lines similar to one another yet utilize different words and tones. You need to have a few different options available to you so that you are not forced to dwell on the same statement for an extended period of time.
4. Seek Feedback
Request feedback from your teammates on which of the subject lines they liked better and have them evaluate all. Getting another person’s viewpoint on a situation might help you see things from a new angle.
5. Evaluate Your Subject Line
As was discussed previously, you should do an A/B test to determine which subject line is more successful. After you have completed the test, choose the email subject line that proved to be the most successful and use it in your subsequent email marketing campaign.
Excellent Examples of Email Subject Lines
Though marketers have toiled to provide a definitive guide that sheds light on the topic, the fact is that you need to inject some personality into your email marketing and come up with a variety of subject lines to convey the right meanings. Even the strongest marketing campaign tips fail if not supported by effective email subject lines.
But how can one achieve these goals without sacrificing professionalism, originality, or excitement? Below, outlined are some categories for crafting effective email subject lines.
1. Implement ‘Fear of Missing Out’ Into Your Email Subject Lines
Fear of being left out is one psychological concept that is hard to overcome. Use scarcity (limited supply) or urgency to address your readers’ fears in your email subject lines.
Keywords like “urgent,” “breaking,” “essential,” and “alert” all indicate a sense of urgency and have been shown to enhance click-through rates in email subject lines.
Here are some excellent examples of subject lines that exploit the fear of missing out as a selling point:
- JetBlue: “You’re missing out on points.”
- Warby Parker: “Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring”
- Digital Marketer: “[WEEKEND ONLY] Get this NOW before it’s gone…”
This topic line is effective for:
- Marketing products for sale
- Service enhancements
- Sign-ups or registrations for introductory discounts and promotions
2. Ignite Curiosity
Us humans have an instinctual need to fill in the blanks in our knowledge since we dislike the feeling of being uninformed. You can use this need for a solution to your advantage by keeping the subject line of your email open-ended. This will pique your subscribers’ curiosity and act like a mystery that must be resolved by reading the email.
You may pique the attention of your subscribers by posing a question, making a promise of something intriguing, or even just stating anything that seems peculiar or out of the ordinary.
The following are some excellent examples of email subject lines that arouse the reader’s interest:
- Digital Marketer: “Is this the hottest career in marketing?”
- Refinery29: “10 bizarre money habits making Millennials richer”
This subject line works the most on:
- Customers at the end of your sales funnel
- Frequently interactive readers
3. Laugh-Inducing Subject Lines
If the subject line of your email makes the people who receive it chuckle, they will feel compelled to open it. Have you skimmed through an article because the subject line made you laugh, but you still wanted to know what it was about?
Being hilarious calls for a little bit more effort and originality, but it may significantly pay off in regard to the CTRs.
Here is a collection of hilarious email subject lines that will get a giggle out of the readers.
- Thrillist: “Try To Avoid These 27 People On New Year’s Eve”
- OpenTable: “Licking your Phone Never Tasted so Good”
4. Inspire Want in Email Subject Lines
Even if you do not consider yourself a very “greedy” person, it is not always easy to say “no” to a tempting offer, even if you do not feel like you could use it at the moment. Because of this, using phrases like “deals,” “discounted rates,” and “special offers” in your email subject lines may be quite effective.
You can often anticipate a rise in your click rates anytime you provide a discount in the subject line of your email. Mainly, this is because individuals who receive your emails are already intrigued by what you offer, making it natural for them to click on the link.
Here are some excellent suggestions for email subject lines that will strike your subscribers’ “desire” button.
- La Mer: “A little luxury at a great price”
- HP: “Flash. Sale. Alert.”
- Topshop: “Get a head start on summer”
5. Incentivise Procrastination
Even those who are not naturally predisposed to procrastination would choose a quick and easy solution over a drawn-out and difficult one.
You may make it simpler for subscribers to accomplish their objectives by providing them with a shortcut or a helpful resource that can save them a significant amount of time and effort.
Here are some excellent illustrations of email subject lines that reward procrastination:
- Digital Marketer: “212 blog post ideas”
- Syed from OptinMonster: “Grow your email list 10X faster with these 30 content upgrade ideas”
6. Probe on Problem Areas
If you have a solid understanding of your consumer persona, you should be aware of the most pressing problems they face. Make use of these pain points to encourage subscribers to read your emails by providing a solution to a problem they are experiencing.
Underneath are a few types of email subject lines that highlight the subscriber’s problems and provide a solution to those problems:
- Sephora: “Your beauty issues, solved”
- Thrillist: “How to Survive Your Next Overnight Flight”
- Duolingo: “Learn a language with only 5 minutes per day”
7. Subject Lines for Personal Emails
There are several methods for making your email subject lines more personal; one of them is to include the subscriber’s name. You might also use conversational language, discuss something personal, or utilize content that suggests a connection or familiarity.
The following are a few examples of individualized email subject lines that are effective in attracting attention.
- James Malinchak: “Crazy Invitation, I am Going to Buy You Lunch…”
- UrbanDaddy: “You’ve Changed”
- Rent the Runway: “Happy Birthday Mary – Surprise Inside!”
This subject line works best for:
- Hand-picked items available for online shopping
- Itineraries for vacations that have been pre-selected
- Menu selections chosen in advance for food delivery apps
Wrapping Up
Your receivers’ inboxes are crowded with messages that have not been read, but you and the rest of your team do not have to contribute to that mess. Instead, pair the above tips with a strong C-level executives email list or customer email list on the market to persuade readers to click through.
