Best Practices For Email Subject Lines

No matter what they say, people do judge emails by their subject lines. Beyond the fundamentals of creating a sense of urgency or curiosity, providing an offer or sharing a cool story. These are some of the tried-and-true tips to help jazz up your subject lines and boost your email engagement.⠀⠀

1. Keep your subject lines short and sweet.

Long subject lines get cut off, especially on mobile. People scan their inboxes very quickly, mostly on their mobiles and they don’t need to read complex flowery language.

2. Do not have a question and exclamation in the same subject line!!!

These tactics are just disruptive and appear as spam. The last place you want your message to go is automatically into their spam folder. Not only is this format overdone, but it’s alienating to your audience. Open-ended questions are a show of ignorance; any good marketer knows their leads better than that. Do not make false promises and yes, tell them what’s inside. You need to determine your purpose of the email and know your call to action, be it a discount, something available for free, or a critical notification.

3. DON’T USE ALL CAPS

People don’t like to be yelled at. Instead try personalizing your emails, establishing relevance, and using catchy and delightful language.

4. Use personalization tokens.

Adding a feeling of rapport is great, everyone loves the sound of their own name. Studies have shown that emails that included the recipients first name have higher clickthrough rates. Alternatively, tailor the subject line to the recipients location. Learn about their preferences, jobs, or general (dis)likes. Just don’t go overboard, it can be a little creepy.