The Art of Writing Subject Lines

Featuring The Benign 99 of the Subject Line

Yalin Karabey
The Sendloop Blog
9 min readApr 12, 2017

--

The Everlasting Impression

Everybody knows that first impression always lasts. Just as they judge a book by its cover, people tend to judge emails by their subject lines. In fact, one out of every three email recipients decide whether or not to open an email based on its subject line alone. So much precious data intended to be useful is going to waste, don’t you think?

Whether it’s business related, personal in nature or aiming to grab the attention of a consumer or a potential buyer; subject line is where you introduce yourself. It is the area where first bit of information about the sender is revealed to the receiver. It is the first impression you’re going to make. In this context, what to write in the subject line might be the key to standing out and making a striking first impression on business professionals, subscribes, potential customers and buyers when it comes to email marketing. The numbers don’t lie and they say a lot on this matter.

Here’s some quality math:

One subject line to rule all subject lines!

The book by the cover

Subject line is the way in to your customers’ attention span. A small window of opportunity to prove that your email is worth the seconds or minutes in the digital wasteland of junk emails. It’s like competing to grab a piece from the promised land. That land in today’s currency is of course time and attention. It’s the way of standing out in a very very very large ocean of data.

Let’s think about classic ways of communication; letters for example. Imagine after putting your letter in the envelope and sealing it, you’re supposed to summarize the content of your letter in a few words or sentences on the tight space on the envelope so that the receiver would know exactly what to expect from your letter. Ways of communication may have changed drastically but the theory remains: Standing out in the crowd is the key! And people still judge the book by its cover, they open the email depending on the subject line.

Let the right one out

There is a lot of conflicting information, professional opinion and ideas all over the internet about email marketing, subject lines and dodgy copywriting. One minute you’re reading through an article telling you to write really short, smart and catchy subject lines aiming to grab the attention and you’re thinking “Good idea,” and BAM! Next minute you’re looking at an infographic proving that long and informative subject lines have better open rates among permissioned subscribers.There is a saying in Turkish; “Trying to sell snails in a Muslim district…” It means if you’re targeting the wrong crowd, failure is inevitable.

The right subject lines never miss!

Who you talkin’ to?

Since your emailing lists are made out of your current and potential customers, partners, buyers, associates; shortly your target audience; you have to get to know them better on every opportunity you get. Know your audience, simple as that. The better you know your crowd the more effective your email marketing will get. What makes your subscribers or the receivers tick & click in life? What makes them to tick & click when receiving a message in the digital world? What makes them react? What interests them more than everything? What are their habits? Which emails do they tend to open more? Have you done any CRM? Do you know who are you talking to? Or are you just shouting out into the darkness and praying it reaches someone?

Have a Do-Not

After you get to know your audience, targeting and fine crafting emails and subject lines will get much easier and effective. Still, let us give you a hint head on: There’s no such thing as the perfect subject line but there is always the right one, the one that tends to boom open rates, the ones that are guaranteed to land you in the spamland. When you know what not-to-do first, you can focus on improving your subjects. If you dig a little into the web you’ll come to realize that there are two no-no’s of the subject line in email marketing nowadays; No CAPS LETTERS and No EXCLAMATION MARK!!!!! Considered to be the taboo of the subject line, using all caps letters and few or many exclamation points also depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your subject line. Do you want to Shock? Alert? Generate curiosity? Make an offer? Grab attention? Inform? What primal instinct are you trying to trigger in your receivers mind?

OPEN ME, OOOPEEEEN MEEEEE….

How you would react to what you’re writing? Would you open a mail after reading “You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!! YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE FOUND YOU!!!!” or one that says “Do Not Open! Never Open!”? How much time do you spend on going through your permissioned subscriptions and sorting out important or relevant emails? What are the driving powers behind your click impulses? Your interests, your business, your career? Remember the good old days where you saw “RE” in the subject line and thought somebody replied to your application? Remember you how many times you clicked on a subject line of an email with FW: only to find out you’ve been tricked into clicking, that you have taken the clickbait? Weren’t you angry? Well, we don’t want our subscribers to feel that way now, do we?

Here is a useful article on the devil’s rejects of emailing by Cem Hurturk:
The FW’s and The RE’s….

Give your crowd a reason to get wet!

It’s raining data

Considering an average business professional gets 100 to 150 emails every working day in his/her inbox, the weather in that inbox is pretty stormy; it’s a data storm! Raining information! It almost reminds me of the miracle of the childbirth, the single sperm that successfully makes it to the uterus out of the million. So try to empathise with your subscribers; think about a new business specialist or a product specialist working a tight schedule. Imagine if you were strictly busy and still make time to have a quick look over every email arriving in the inbox, even a glance though the spam or junk folder looking for that useful email, that newsletter or the info that will make your day better. Today, you’d probably unsubscribe in the blink of an eye if you felt you were being tricked into opening an email.

So think ahead and be truthful to your customers and potential buyers. Don’t create false expectations that end up frustrating your audience. It all comes down to knowing your target audience better. When you’ve successfully analysed and identified with your crowd the effect of your subject lines will have increased tremendously. However the next thing you’d worry about will keeping away from the junk / spam folder. So, if you’d like to know what words will most likely get you blacklisted, check this list out:

A Good List Of Spam Triggers

Subject is King

Well sort of. OK maybe not so much when it’s compared to content but it’s not to be underestimated. Generating curiosity is known to be an effective way of achieving higher open rates. There are a few things that email marketing community have identified in years that statistically increase your open rates. So, here’s a benign list that every email marketer, or any sender for that matter, should go through before crafting the right subject line. A list containing tips, information, advice, a few tactics and a few ideas to help you improve the quality of your subject lines and increase your engagement.

Let’s have a look at which balls to dodge while we go for -not the perfect- but just the right subject line. We put this useful list together based on 10 years of experience in email marketing, and hoping that it will one day become to be known as the “Golden Principles of Writing Subject Lines” for email marketing. Here it is:

The Benign 99 of the Subject Line

  1. Give recipients a reason to check out your content
  2. Keep it short
  3. Know your subscribers
  4. Personalize but not too much
  5. Be descriptive
  6. Keep it smart
  7. Don’t create false expectations
  8. Give news & first hand information
  9. Use online tools like subject line checker, spell checker
  10. Use a thesaurus for a more effective and variating wording
  11. Appeal to recipient’s emotions
  12. Use location-specific subject lines
  13. Always A/B test your subject lines
  14. Be relatable and keep a professional distance at the same time
  15. Adapt your subjects periodically (Special days, holidays, celebrations etc.)
  16. Spice up your subject lines with some pun / word play
  17. Aim at the right audience
  18. Open with a greeting
  19. Use timing to maintain actuality, don’t be old news
  20. Avoid too familiar phrases
  21. Be natural and humane to avoid being identified as a robot
  22. Don’t use all uppercase subject lines
  23. Create a specialized tone of voice
  24. Recommended character count is 40–60
  25. Empathize with your crowd
  26. Create a sense of scarcity
  27. Want to stand out? Keep it shorter or longer than the standard
  28. Imagine subject line as the cover of a book
  29. Avoid RE: or FW: handling unless intentional (a good article here)
  30. Know what gets you in the blacklist (a good list of words here)
  31. Do some research on good and bad practices
  32. Keep your subscribers engaged by variating your subject lines
  33. Follow up on your previous subject lines
  34. Analyze and get to know your competition
  35. The word NEWSLETTER may decrease open rates
  36. Use / give numbers and statistics
  37. Mostly be straightforward
  38. Avoid overly used phrases like; Special, Exclusive, Only, Offer etc.
  39. Subject lines with How-to may increase open rates
  40. Do not misspell unless it’s a deliberate typo — use a spell checker
  41. Follow, track your rivals & adapt accordingly
  42. Know-Your-Crowd to write more relevant subject lines
  43. If you’re going for humour know your limits
  44. Take calculated risks when trying something new
  45. Never ever plagiarize
  46. Always keep an open mind, times are changing faster than ever
  47. There’s no room for grammatical errors unless it’s intentional
  48. Micro-test your subjects with a potential customer you know
  49. Challenge your subscribers
  50. ⅔ of every email is reported as spam based on their subject lines
  51. Make sure you’re heard by the right crowd
  52. Rise or generate curiosity
  53. Track, measure and analyze useful feedback
  54. Make an offer
  55. Ask an intriguing question
  56. Rise awareness
  57. Creating a sense of urgency may increase open rates
  58. Be specific
  59. Introduce new stuff
  60. Don’t pass on old news
  61. Build a relationship with your customers
  62. Do not trick your customers by creating false expectations
  63. Study the recipient’s spam policy
  64. Although using special characters may trigger spam filters they may also increase open rates so experiment occasionally
  65. Maintain a subject — content harmony
  66. Shorter the subject line higher the open rate on mobile
  67. Creating a sense of exclusivity may rise open rates by 20%
  68. 8/10 recipients prefer all lowercase letters in the subject line
  69. Know your boundaries
  70. Use CTA’s
  71. Localization is known to increase open rates
  72. Preview your subject on mobile / desktop
  73. Be humanistic introduce people behind your products
  74. Tell a compelling story
  75. Using special characters may trigger spam filters
  76. Attention spans are decreasing so being brief may work everytime
  77. Have solid, selected mailing list & always keep growing it
  78. Differentiate your subjects Potential customer / Permissioned subscriber
  79. Create and build up a tone of voice
  80. Give a good hint
  81. Do not complicate things; be perceivable
  82. Do not underestimate the power of a good copy
  83. Provide useful information to build your authority
  84. Appeal to emotions
  85. Improve your audience
  86. Be self-aware and confident
  87. Do not beg for attention
  88. Stay flexible and be adaptive
  89. Invite your audience to your website
  90. Be friendly
  91. Remember, you’re competing for bandwidth and attention
  92. Not getting good rates, then hire a copywriter
  93. A business professional receives 100–150 emails every day
  94. Highlight a single benefit
  95. Test, test, test & adapt accordingly
  96. Don’t overdo any of the above, variate & diversify
  97. Remember; you make your own rules on writing subject lines
  98. Congrats, you’ve reached the end! Keep in mind that there is no perfect subject line but there is always the right one!
  99. Stay in the Loop & Happy Emailing!

Did you enjoy this article? Did it make you laugh or spark an idea? If so please like ❤️, comment ✍️️ & recommend to your friends 👏.

--

--