15 Tips for Writing Better Email Subject Lines

October 30, 2024 By Ashley Orndorff, aka Marketing Geek

Email can be a great tool for connecting with customers, building relationships with them, and also growing your business. But, in order to connect with people through email, they have to receive it and open it first. Several factors affect whether someone opens your email, but the subject line can often make the difference between an open and a deletion. Here are a few tips for writing better email subject lines:

1. Keep Subject Lines Short and Descriptive

Writing a good subject line is one of the email marketing tips for more effective emails. And, some hallmarks of a good subject line are that it accurately describes what’s in the email and is also concise.

There isn’t a lot of space available in someone’s inbox, especially when mobile devices account for 60% of email campaign reads. So, your subject line needs to get to the point before it gets cut off. If you fill your subject line with fluff and put the important stuff at the end, it’s likely to be too long and people won’t see the most important parts of your message.

Determine the main benefit of your email and figure out how to describe it and entice someone to click in as few words as you can. Keep it simple, keep it short, and keep it descriptive. Sticking to around 30-50 characters or fewer or 5-6 words is generally a good approach.

You can make your subject line longer as long as you know that whatever you put after 50 characters or so may not be seen by anyone. Also, be aware that a subject line that is too long, depending on its content and other factors, may cause your email to get caught in spam filters.

2. Consider Trying Emojis in Email Subject Lines

Emojis are pervasive and have become common in marketing and messaging. They can also be useful in making your email subject lines more interesting and can help keep them short. Although they can grab attention, you do have to be careful that they’re not causing problems.

This doesn’t mean that you should never use them, but you should be aware of what, where, and how you use them as well as potential pitfalls to avoid. Similar to hashtag mistakes, you don’t want to make the same mistakes with emojis in your emails, your social media, or any other messaging.

5 Potential Problems to Watch Out For With Subject Line Emojis:

They’re irrelevant to your target audience.
Your target audience HATES them.
Emoji formats and rendering are inconsistent across platforms.
They may be difficult to understand or irrelevant to the topic.
Emojis may not mean what you think they mean and meanings can change over time.

3. Use the Preheader Text to Supplement Your Subject Line

If you truly have a lot you need to feature, try breaking it up between your subject line and the preheader, or preview, text. The preheader text is what follows the subject line when your email is listed in someone’s inbox. It can be a useful place to enhance your subject line further.

Here, too, you don’t want to rely on someone seeing it or reading it. But, it does offer a little more space to elaborate or add to what you mention in your subject line. It’s also useful if you want to keep your subject line shorter as an enticement and then offer more description in the preview text.

Just make sure you define your preheader text before sending out an email campaign. If you don’t customize it, it will often display the first few lines of your email. Leaving it up to chance may mean your preheader text is not relevant or doesn’t make sense and it could negatively impact your open rates.

4. Leave Room for Personalization in Your Subject Line

When it comes to marketing to and connecting with customers, a little bit of personalization can go a long way. Too much personalization can be creepy, but a little can make your customers feel valued. When it comes to email, personalizing subject lines can increase open rates by 50%!

Be Aware That First Name Personalization Might Not Work For Your Audience

One of the benefits of email marketing is connecting with customers directly and it can be a way to connect even more with personalization. Including a recipient’s name in the subject line is one of the top ways to personalize it. Provided your subscriber information is filled in and correct, it’s also usually easy to do in whatever mail client or email service provider you’re using.

You will want to test this with your emails. First name personalization in email subject lines is everywhere and is used so heavily across the board, and especially in spam, that you have to be careful just assuming that it will be effective.

Depending on your audience, they may respond better or worse to their name in the subject line. For some people, a name in the subject line may come across as a spam email or marketing email they don’t need and they may respond better to their name in the copy of the email itself.

For others, having their name in the subject line may entice them to open the email more often than a subject line without it. Ignoring personalization is one of the email marketing mistakes to avoid, but your audience may respond to certain types of personalization better than others. So, it’s important to test it to find what works best for you.

5. Strike the Right Balance With Personalization

With first-name personalization not necessarily being as effective as it has been in the past, you need to get creative and try other ways to personalize your messaging. However, it’s important to strike the right balance. You can also use CRM data to enhance your marketing campaigns, like including interesting ways to personalize emails that are relevant to your target audience.

You can try using a recipient’s last name. Including a reference to a product they have already purchased can help increase engagement on emails for cross-selling or presenting related products. Mentioning a topic a subscriber has previously expressed interest in or something location-related in a useful way can also add personalization and intrigue without getting creepy.

Trying new and interesting ideas in subject lines can help you increase engagement with your emails. At the same time, things that are too unique and different can throw off and confuse recipients. Too much personalization can be creepy, it can be one of the ways your business is annoying potential customers, and it can also make your business and your outreach look like spam or phishing scams if you do it wrong.

Brand Awareness and Trust Affects How Potential Customers Perceive Email Personalization

This perception is also heavily influenced by how much the recipient trusts your brand and how relevant the personalization is. If there isn’t a clear fit or a potential customer doesn’t know your brand well or trust you yet, they can react negatively to emails that feel too personalized. Often, this can trigger privacy and security concerns.

On the other hand, if recipients have a high level of trust in a brand and have had good experiences with them, they will often react more positively to personalization in general. This is also why it’s important to use a familiar sender name so that customers know who is sending them these emails. Not only does it help build trust, but it also can help increase open rates and engagement.

Depending on the relationship, they may also be more receptive to personalization that would be perceived as too invasive from another brand or in a different situation. This just underlines how important it is to build trust and build strong customer relationships.

6. Avoid Sounding Like Spam or a Pushy Sales Pitch

Email spam and email scams are common. The last thing you want to do is have a subject line that makes your email seem like one of them. Using all caps, especially when offering something for FREE, doesn’t usually entice someone to open an email and can trigger spam filters.

On top of that, people are busy and they don’t want to deal with pushy salespeople. If your email’s subject line comes across as a pushy sales pitch or an offer that is too good to be true, it will likely cause your email to end up unopened and in the trash. You do want to create a sense of urgency, especially with limited-time offers, but getting it wrong can hurt your open rate.

7. Take Inspiration From Top-Performing Subject Lines

If you’re stuck on creating a good starting subject line or looking for new ideas to test, take inspiration from subject lines from top-performing email campaigns. The best email marketing campaigns usually also have fantastic subject lines.

Track down some examples, take a look at the subject lines for them, and see what formats are being used, and determine if there are any elements you can take, customize, and test in your own subject lines. In doing so, you can find out what works best for your campaigns and write better email subject lines moving forward.

8. Begin With Action

A subject line is a descriptive call to action for your email. It should provide a clear path of action for subscribers to take and inspire them to click and open the email. Using active voice and starting your email with action verbs helps your subscribers get into an action-taking mindset. It’s also a key factor in writing successful Calls-to-Action (CTAs) for your business.

Not only can it entice them to click and then continue taking action, but it also often keeps your subject line more concise. Depending on the topic of the email, the offer, your approach, etc., starting with an action verb can also create excitement or a sense of urgency.

9. Create a Sense of Urgency

You still want to avoid coming across as too pushy, but you can still create a sense of urgency for sales or promotional emails. Simply including a realistic end date for a special sale, promotion, limited edition product, etc. can create some urgency and be an efficient way to nudge subscribers into action.

If the campaign will feature a series of emails around a limited-time offer or product, you can also count down in the email subject line to continue building an atmosphere of urgency. However, you don’t want to send too many emails or continue to push these emails to subscribers who have already taken advantage of the offer. So, make sure you have a good balance and are using behavioral triggers to avoid sending to people who have already converted.

10. Try For a Little Mystery to Pique Curiosity

If urgency isn’t what you’re going for and doesn’t fit with the emails you are sending, you can try a little mystery to pique curiosity instead. Engaging a subscriber’s interest by making them curious enough to open the email can result in higher open rates for your campaign.

Asking questions in your subject lines can be a great way to create curiosity. You can also treat your subject line like a teaser. Make sure it is descriptive enough while still leaving some mystery and without coming across as clickbait.

You may need to test this a few times before you find the right fit. If you’re too vague or obscure, your subject line could make your email look like spam instead of something interesting that is worth opening.

Also, make sure the content of the email provides enough value to subscribers to satisfy their curiosity and justify the open. If your content doesn’t back up your offer or match expectations, you may end up with some unsubscribes on your hands instead of increased engagement.

11. Make it Exclusive

People like to feel special. If your subject line can make your subscribers feel special and like they have exclusive access to something, it can encourage them to open the email and also help build loyalty.

Phrasing in your email subject line that indicates exclusivity and something that is only available to subscribers can help you write better email subject lines and increase open rates. This is the scarcity effect in action. This is also a good framing technique to use when you are evaluating lead magnet ideas and the role emails can play in promotion and delivery with them.

12. Use Numbers in Subject Lines Where it Makes Sense

Using numbers where it makes sense can take an email subject line from vague to specific. It can also help you increase open rates and campaign conversion rates. Numbers can be used to create a sense of urgency for a limited number of products, invites, etc. They can also be used to encourage event or webinar registrations, provide an interesting statistic to pique curiosity, and more.

13. Write Multiple Subject Lines and Test Them

Writing good subject lines takes time and effort. There are a lot of tactics you can use to craft a compelling subject line like using numbers, starting off with action-oriented verbs, asking a question, making a joke, and more. Some tactics may be a better fit for some emails over others, but you’ll likely be able to use several of them on an email. The trick is knowing which one to use.

That’s where testing can help you. By writing multiple subject lines before you send an email, you can narrow the selection down to a few of the best. Then, you can run some A/B tests on the subject lines you have to determine which one your audience responds to the best. You can also re-write a subject line and resend an email a few days later in order to reach people who didn’t open it the first time.

You don’t want to blast people’s inboxes or send so much email that you get blacklisted from sending, but you do want to test your subject lines and re-send to the segment of your list that may have missed the first round. Depending on how much email your audience usually gets and how often they check their email, this waiting period before re-sending could be a couple of days or it could be a couple of weeks – it all depends on the demographics and behaviors of your target audience.

14. Check Grammar and Spelling Before Sending

Email is notorious for grammar mistakes, spelling errors, broken links, and more. When it comes to email marketing for your business, the emails your customers see are a reflection of your brand.

One of the best business email etiquette tips is simply to read and review your email before you send it, including the subject line and preview text. Read it out loud or have someone else read through it for any glaring grammar or spelling mistakes. Use a tool like Grammarly or Hemingway as well, but don’t rely solely on them as they don’t catch everything.

15. Send a Test Email To Yourself For Review and Check Everything

Send a test email to yourself to preview the subject line, email copy, and overall design. Also, test all links to make sure they are working and pointing where they’re supposed to go. If you’re including a coupon or discount code, make sure it works before you send it out and that your checkout is equipped to recognize it.

By going through an editing and testing checklist before you hit send or schedule to send, you can make sure your email reflects well on your brand and is poised to help make every open and click count for your business.

Increase Email Engagement With Better Subject Lines

Email can be a valuable tool for your business and a good subject line is one of the essential elements of a great email campaign. With these tips for writing better email subject lines, you can help make sure all the effort you put into creating and sending those emails pays off.

Good subject lines often mean your emails are opened and clicked instead of getting caught in spam filters, ignored, or deleted. You may even be able to generate more leads with email marketing. Oftentimes, the emails you send to customers and potential customers are meant to bring them back to your website.

But, if your website isn’t up to par, it can drive them away and render your email efforts ineffective. If it’s been a while since your website was last updated, it could be a sign that it’s time for a website redesign. Contact us for a meeting of the MINDs to talk about how we can get your website back on track and performing for your business!