5 Tips for Crafting Compelling Email Subject Lines

September 1, 2016 Teresa Clark

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The first thing you need to get right when it comes to email marketing is the subject line. If you can’t get your subscribers to open your emails, it really doesn’t matter how good your email message is.

It’s easy to spend a lot of time crafting a great message and then just slap a subject line on it at the end. Spend some time writing your subject lines and see what type of headline gets good open rates. Here are five tips to get you started:

Keep it short – You want your readers to see the entire subject line before they click it. You also want to make it easy for people to scan through their email messages. Try to get your point across in 50 characters or less. Pay attention to how your subject lines look on your own devices. Keep a swipe file of subject lines that grabbed your attention. Even if the emails are on a very different topic, you can adapt them for your own needs.

Avoid spammy words – Stay away from using any words associated with spam emails, words like “sale,” “discount,” “coupon,” “free,” “limited time offer,” and even “reminder.” Even if these words don’t trigger a spam filter and actually make it to your readers’ inboxes, chances are high these messages will get ignored. Find better words that get your message across to your readers.

Personalize it – While personalizing emails with someone’s first name has been overused in some markets, it still works well for many of us. Give it try and see if it works for you. Don’t overdo it, but use it when you really need them to open the email. Depending on which data you collect when your readers sign up, you can personalize other things, like their location for example. Seeing the name of your state or even city in an email subject line is sure to get your attention.

Pique their curiosity – Everyone is a bit nosy, so it’s hard to ignore subject lines that sound intriguing or only tell part of the story. Using “…” at the end of your subject line also works. The idea here is simple. You want readers to open the email to find out what you’re talking about or how the story ends.

Frankly the best tip when it comes to crafting compelling subject lines is to keep a swipe file of ones that enticed readers to open the messages. Don’t be afraid to steal ideas from other industries too. Just be sure you personalize them for your business and your target audience.