Click balm vs click bait
Your email subject line has ONE job: get your email opened.
It doesn’t have to summarize, sell, sway, promise, threaten, yell, or whisper anything else.
It just needs to land in your person’s overflowing inbox, sit there looking all identical to the others in font and size, and, in a few short words and maybe (maybe) an emoji, lure your person’s cute li’l cursor to hover overtop and then <click> open!
Then the rest of your well-crafted, clear, and personality-packed email can do its thing.
Your subject line’s job is done.
Recently, I podcasted with Hilda Gan on Rev Up Your Business, eager to provide some quick writing tips to her business owner/entrepreneur listeners. Hilda asked me about some guidelines for what should and shouldn’t be in a great email subject line.
And quickly I answered, whatever will get the email opened.
Then I just as quickly backtracked and added, “…without lying or baiting and switching.”
So how do you write subject lines that get opened?
We’ve been wrestling with emails long enough to know what we don’t like. We don’t like ALL CAPS. We don’t like other people deciding what is Urgent or Important. And my spam filters typically catch anything that promises MEGA PAYOUT or GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS.
There are ways to increase your open rates without offering payouts or girls.
Straight-up deliver what they’re waiting for.
This is my favourite kind of subject line because it says what it means and means what it says: “Here’s the zoom link for our call,” “Web copy attached,” and “Is Friday okay?” are ones I’ve sent recently. No need to get fancy yet sure to get opened because it’s super clear that what your reader wants is one click away.
Pique curiosity.
When you refer to a secret, leave out a word, or promise a useful tip, your reader might peek at your email as soon as it lands just to “close the loop” on that provocative subject line. In my podcast moment, I used the terrible example “Never do this to your dog again.” What I meant was, as long as your email fulfills the subject line promise, and it’s on-brand for you to write this way, it can be fun to tempt your reader into reading. As long as your email lives up to the hype. The problem with “10 tips and #4 will shock you!” is that rarely does #4 actually shock, and often there aren’t even 10 actual tips. But an Open Loop subject line done well works well. Recently, “Ugh… the client wants samples. What do you do?” and “Are you making this value proposition mistake?” lured me in. Even I opened this year with “I predict that in 2024…” (my predictions are here.)
Know what your people find interesting.
You don’t need mystery when you’re downright fascinating. Any mention of an AI fail sucks me in immediately. For example, I refused to open “Your generative AI toolkit” but “A massive AI fail you can use as an example” got my attention. As did “Why clients still need you in an AI world.”
Use an emoji for colour and pop.
A long, long time ago, studies claimed that using a reader’s first name in the subject line (“Last call for webinar sign-up, Kate”) improved open rates by a measurable amount. But it’s so common now it doesn’t jump out like it used to. Enter the cute and colourful emoji. Katelyn Bourgoin sends the same newsletter subject line every week with a different buyer psychology highlighted: “Framing 🧠Why We Buy,” “Scarcity 🧠 Why We Buy.” My inbox is awash with “Hey Kate!” but that cute pink brain still gets my attention. Again, if it’s on brand, and if it’s message-appropriate, and only as long as it’s not overdone.
Keep writing emails your people want to read.
Which brings me to my final point: If I hated Katelyn’s emails, no emoji in the world would get me to open them. At the end of the day, I find her newsletter useful and interesting. I know what to expect, and if I don’t have time to digest it right away, I save it for later. I open every email I get from AI Sidequest too, regardless of subject line. Because I like the Mignon Fogarty ‘s AI curiosity. (This research, for example, supports this: “45% of subscribers say they are likely to read your email because of who it’s from, and 33% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line.”)
At the end of the day, like most marketing hacks there are no magic hacks. Good ideas expressed in interesting ways that your right people find relevant is the secret formula for emails that get opened and read. Did #4 shock you?