How To Craft A Great Email Sub­ject Line

One of the quick­est ways to grow your busi­ness is to send out email newslet­ters or sales notes that peo­ple want to read and re­spond to – and buy your prod­uct or service!

Part of that en­tails hav­ing a great sub­ject line that makes peo­ple want to click on your email or ezine ads.

So what is the se­cret to writ­ing a click­able sub­ject line? Here are some tips:

Be­fore send­ing out emails, check on your other in­for­ma­tion first

If I had a dime for each time I re­ceived an email from “Info” or “Ad­min” or “John,” I would be rich. Well, maybe I wouldn’t be rich, but I would be less an­noyed than I am now. One of the things, aside from a sub­ject line, that makes me want to click on an email is if I can eas­ily see who it is from. That means that the sender needs to fill out their email con­tact in­for­ma­tion to show ei­ther their first and last name, their com­pany name, or both. It is much eas­ier to want to click on an email if I know who it is from.

Avoid words that will put your email in the spam filter

You prob­a­bly al­ready know that words like “free” and “Vi­a­gra” could get your email in the spam fil­ter. There are a slew of other words, though.

Hub­Spot has a list of what to avoid, but keep in mind that spam­mers are al­ways up­dat­ing their game, so be sure to be on the look­out for trig­ger words to avoid.

A good way to do that is to check with what­ever soft­ware you are send­ing the emails with – some of them will alert you to spammy sub­ject lines.

Do not use all caps or a lot of ex­cla­ma­tion points

Writ­ing ACT NOW – OR ELSE!!! THAT MEANS NOW!!!  is more likely to make your read­ers roll their eyes at your ezine ads than click on your email. Do not use all-caps, and es­chew lots of punc­tu­a­tion marks. You want to look like a pro­fes­sional, not a fly-by-night scammer.

Use first names – within reason

It is fine on some emails to use the first line in the sub­ject line – when it makes sense. For ex­am­ple, Ebates gets my at­ten­tion when they com­bine my name, along with men­tion­ing a deal for a prod­uct I have bought be­fore. The per­son­al­iza­tion is key.

Think about what your reader might be in­ter­ested in 

What a con­cept, right? Think about what types of emails you have sent that have got­ten the most pos­i­tive re­ac­tion, and try to keep that in mind for your sub­ject line. For ex­am­ple, Williams-Sonoma has had great suc­cess with sell­ing crois­sants for at-home cook­ing, so telling its read­ers in the sub­ject line about a crois­sant sale could lead to great results.

And don’t for­get the first few lines of the email

For those of us us­ing Gmail, we can read the first line or two of an email with­out open­ing.  That means that you had bet­ter have some­thing in­ter­est­ing to say there, in­stead of clear­ing your throat. Think holis­ti­cally – be­tween the sub­ject line, the from field, and the first few lines of the email, make sure it is some­thing that will ap­peal to the email’s readers.

ABT – Al­ways be testing

The ideal sub­ject lines for you may be unique to your busi­ness, and your cus­tomers. So it may be worth your while to test var­i­ous sub­ject lines, and track how they do.

This may cost you some time now, but it could save some ag­gra­va­tion in the long run.  Good luck! To learn more about email, and ezine ads, click here.

Lisa Swan writes for a va­ri­ety of com­put­ing and busi­ness sites. She lives in New York City.