Email subject lines: 5 Dos and a Don’t

Maybe you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover… but you can totally judge an email by its subject line.

“Scale your service business (without working more hours)”

“Only 29% of people do this”

“Money Manifesting: are you in or out?”

“Getting a little personal today. Hope that’s cool. 😊”

In fact, you’re supposed to judge an email by its subject line.

*Clickable* subject lines are, after all, the magical alohomora spells of online marketing. It’s the sole the purpose of a subject line to tempt the receiver to open the email and read on.

If you’re emailing a colleague or client, you can get right to the point:

“Speech ideas as promised”

“Can you meet next week?”

“Invoice for treehouse construction attached”

We can assume the people we’re working with are expecting to, looking forward to, even could get fired for not, opening our emails.

However, when it’s going to take some coaxing to get your reader to click “open”, you may need to get creative. In this case, your subject line won’t preview the email, bottom-line its content or draw attention to the attachment. In this case, your subject line has only one job – get that email opened.

And the best way to do that, is with the old WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) approach. Promise your reader that there’s something tantalizingly good waiting for them inside. Something that is simply too good to miss.

There are a few broad categories you can use to pique your intended reader’s curiosity and interest, so they’re compelled to read more.

(And if this is starting to sound kind of creepy-copy-manipulative, may I just say  – not everything is for everyone and that’s okay. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have peanut butter hiding inside. I love them. My mouth waters for that beautiful balance of smooth chocolate and overly-sweet-little-bit-crunchy peanut butter. My roommate however hates chocolate mixed with peanut butter. He’s not ever ever going to bite into a Reese’s Cup, or Piece for that matter, no matter what the packaging looks like, or the ad campaign says. Nobody’s forcing anyone to open your email, no matter how great your subject line is. The little garbage can icon is always available. So let’s just agree now that we won’t be blamed for trying.)

1. Answer inside

To get this one right, you need to know the burning questions & desires that your audience has, and the words they use to express it.

“Scale your service business (without working more hours)”

That’s a problem that all fee-by-hour service providers have at some point - you eventually run out of hours. (In this example “How to” is implied – to cut down on word length.) How to… where to… when to… want to xyz?.... are all great promises of the work, life and love hacks your readers will find inside your email. If you can get the “without working more hours” part right, then your folks will read on to find the “How to scale your business” answer that your email provides.

2. The surprising explanation

Ah, pure curiosity. Sometimes we’ll open and read on, not to solve a problem, but just to learn something new. Even if you don’t have an ex-husband, or are a Millenial… or know wtf the email is about, you might be tempted to open:

“My Ex-Husband Cheated On His Girlfriend — Why I Haven’t Told Her.”

“10 bizarre money habits making Millennials richer”

“It’s weird… but it works”

3. What you don’t know will hurt you

Subject lines about secrets, myth-busting, surprises, and things I thought I knew but there’s a possibility I was wrong are also great curiosity pique-ers. The idea is to sow a little doubt, so readers open the email to assuage their fears and/or find out how to course-correct. Be careful with this one. While it’s great when a subject line makes someone stop & think, bona fide scare tactics hit below the belt. My position is: acknowledge problems your audience is having, but don’t saddle them with new ones.

“Are you making these 5 mistakes on your coaching website?”

is okay by me. However, you won’t find me crafting a subject line like “Your business will fail without this social media hack.” Life is already scary enough, thanks.

4. The Open Loop / Empty Suitcase

These subject lines leave you hanging by only telling half of the story. On purpose. That’s when you’ll see ellipses and the word “this” a lot.  You have to open the email to find out a) what the sender is talking about or b) what “this” refers to.

“The next time I see you, I’m gonna do this…”

“I tried a webinar and this happened”

“Only 29% of people do this”

You don’t even know if you’re curious, until you open the email and find out what it’s actually about. Or the mystery comes in the form of a half-sentence:

“About the other day…”

“knew that wouldn’t last…”

“In case you haven’t heard…”

5. Hey you, yes YOU

Oh do we humans ever like to think about ourselves! It feels super corny, but statistics* show that using your reader’s name right in the subject line works: “Personalized promotional mailings have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates than nonpersonalized mailings” * 2014 statistics, mind you, but we do love to see our own name.

That’s why these get opened:

”I’m in love with Kate”

“It’s happening now, Kate”

Even just “you” works:

“I’m popping your name on a post-it”

“You, me and gabby Bernstein”

“Do-er or Be-er: which one are you?”

LinkedIn gets me every time with “You appeared in 22 searches this week.” I did? Really? Maybe I’ll just have a quick peek to see why.

And finally, please don’t do this

It’s no fair to lie, misrepresent or bait & switch just to get an email opened. If you refer to anything in the email subject line, you need to pay it off in the email itself.

“She filed for divorce after she saw this photograph… can you see why?”

They got me. It turns out the photograph “she” found was of her husband’s secret identical twin brother who had lost a finger in a freak high school shop class incident, so of course I couldn’t ‘see why’ from the random photo provided that didn’t even show a four-fingered twin. Sigh.

My point is, don’t make subject-line promises your email doesn’t keep. If your subject line announces “5 secrets to fill your groups and programs with webinars,” then your email needs to list, and list clearly, those 5 secrets. Are those secrets things I already know? Would I necessarily consider those 5 things super top-secret? Maybe not. But you promised 5 things and I got 5 things.

I can decide for myself whether this email was valuable, whether I learned something, and whether my life is now better having read it.

Remember?

The only job of the subject line is to get that email open. Then the email content can start its work to educate, entertain, inspire, inform and engage.