How to Write Email Subject Lines That Get People Clicking

In email marketing, the subject line is extremely important because it’s the first thing people are going to see. In fact, 47% of email recipients open an email just because of its subject line and 69% report an email as spam based on the subject line.

If you can’t get people to open your email, then it doesn’t matter how good the content inside your email is because people won’t read it. So, how do you write a good subject line? Don’t worry, this article will reveal five tips in writing killer subject lines that get people to click your email.

Pick your words wisely

In writing a subject line, some words have the ability to trigger positive reactions from the audience more than the others. So, you have to pick your words carefully. Choosing the right words will get people to open your mail, while the wrong words will make them abandon it. Take a look at these examples:

• According to SendGrip, the word “today” has a lower engagement rate (11.8%) than both “yesterday” and “tomorrow” (20.5% and 22.3% respectively). Furthermore, adding the word “free” in the subject line will lower an email’s engagement rate.
• Research by Adestra suggests that the words “thanks”, “thank you”, and “breaking” are among the top-performing subject line words, while formal words like “journal”, “forecast”, “report”, and “training” are among the worst-performing ones.

Don’t be too long

There’s a limited space of subject line that is shown to the recipients, especially if they use mobile phones. And the thing is, most people use their smartphones to check the emails. So, make sure to keep your subject line short and crisp.

As guidance, most email providers only show between 33 to 43 characters of subject line on mobile before it cuts off. It means that you need to keep your subject line under 33 characters so that all of your recipients can read your full subject line no matter what devices they use.

Use emojis

You’re not the only one sending emails to your audience, tons of other brands do it as well. So, you need to find a way to stand out from the rest of the emails in your recipients’ inbox. One of the best ways is by using suitable emojis.

A study from Mobile Marketer confirms that the use of emojis in the subject line can boost email’s open rate. Unfortunately, the study doesn’t specify the kinds of emojis that work and the kinds that don’t. You need to run your own A/B testing to get the best formula for using emojis.

Another downside of using emojis is that older operating systems usually don’t support the use of images in the subject line. Windows XP is the primary example of this. Instead of emojis, Windows XP users will see this symbol ☐.