13 Best Email Subject Line Tips to Increase Your Open Rates & Engagements

Email Marketing is a cost-effective yet strong digital strategy to promote your brand widely. It plays a remarkable impact on branding, engagement, generate sales, reactivation, improving traffic, and getting referrals. According to statistics, Email Marketing has the highest return on investment.

Most amazingly, for every $1 spent on email marketing you will get $38 in return.

However, the success of your email campaign largely depends on the email open rate. In that case, the email subject line is your first and maybe the last impression on your recipients. Sometimes it’s important than your main email body. After all, a great newsletter is useless if it never sees the light of the day.

Today we will share 13 helpful email subject line tips to optimize your campaigns with appealing subject lines-

How to Write Good Email Subject Lines

1. Keep the Subject Line Simple and Easy to Understand

2. Include these Words to Boost Email Open Rates

3. Remove Words that Decrease Open Rates

4. Personalize the Subject Line

5. Offer Quick and Easy Solution

6. Leverage the Subject Line with Announcement/ Events

7. Take the Advantage of Funny Email Subject Line

8. Add Number and List into the Subject Line

9. Insert Question or Other Punctuation in Email Subject Line

10. Add an Emoji in Your Subject Line

11. Keep the Email Subject Line in Right Character Length

12. Create Trust and Curiosity through the Subject Line

13. Subject Lines that Introduce a Story

As a bonus learn how we generated an 84% email open rate with 9- practical examples.

Why You Need Good Email Subject Lines

You can cultivate a relationship with your potential customers, leads, prospects, and even existing customers through emails. Hence, Email Marketing is broadly used for customers’ acquisition and retention.

Over the last few years, Email Marketing becomes a popular marketing tactic to promote any brand with proven statistics. Regardless, digital marketers often struggle to uplift the email open rate. Actually, it depends on so many aspects like appealing subject line, brand value, message delivery style, previous commitment, and many more.

Email subject lines play a crucial role in the decision of whether your emails get opened or not. According to research done by Business2Community. 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. Whereas, 69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line.

This stats clearly shows us over two-third of email recipients open their emails based on the subject line. It means if your subject line is weak, it can be marked as spam. Perhaps it contains amazing content or attractive offers.

Here is an infographic that will help you to get a clear idea of all the aspects.

Go through the following creative email subject line tips to increase email campaign open rate.

13 Best Email Subject Line Tips to Increase Open Rate

Email open rate is the percentage of the total subscribers who opened an email campaign. Without a good open rate, the greatest campaign is worthless. This rate varies on different factors like the subject line, email content, sending time, relevancy of the subject, subscribers preference, personalization and so forth.

Let’s learn how to write email subject to improve the email open rate vastly.

1. Keep the Subject Line Simple and Easy to Understand

Your subject line should be clear and concise to convey your message. More specifically, at first, you need to analyze your buyer persona and configure the email subject accordingly. Your audience must realize their advantages to read your email from the subject line.

For Example:

• Subject Line: Relive Full Webinar on Dokan Here!
• Subject Line: 35% Discount for a Flying Start of 2020!

Therefore, keep the subject short, direct and descriptive that encourage the readers to click on the mail.

2. Include these Words to Boost Email Open Rates

A recent study implies that there are some influential words that can encourage readers to open an email. It’s a good idea to insert these words, terms, and symbols into your subject. Perhaps it can improve the email open rates.

Further research proves that the open rate will increase more if you use 3 or more of the words/terms and/or symbols from this list in your subject line.

3. Remove Words that Decrease Open Rates 

Conversely, there are some words that may discourage the recipients to open your mail. In that case, there is a high possibility they will keep your emails unread or ignore by assuming them spams. Here’s a shortlist of 100 words, terms, and symbols. You should avoid them while writing an email subject line.

Ensure the zero use of these words, symbols or terms to make your email campaign worthy.

4. Personalize the Subject Line

Personalization always works great with the audience as it makes them feel special. So, you can easily impose extra importance to your subscribers by personalizing the subject line.

A personalized email has a higher possibility to be opened by the recipients. As they believe it can deliver the content more likely to be relevant to their interests.

Personalized subject lines have an 82% higher open rate compared to generic subject lines.

It is an effective marketing strategy to build strong relationships with new prospects and also existing customers.

5. Offer Quick and Easy Solution

In today’s world, everyone is busy. So, they are always searching for an easy and quick solution. Instead of saving little in each month you want to be rich instantly. That’s why we buy lottery tickets and search for shortcuts.

You can also leverage this technique in your subject line. Offer something that is easy to implement and which will bring benefits in the shortest time period. If you can optimize the subject line with this message then the subscriber is more likely to open the email.

6. Leverage the Subject Line with Announcement/ Events

If you are going to launch any new product, conduct an event or any other announcement, let your subscriber inform. This will help to feel them precious for you.

For Example:

• Subject Line: Here is your free ticket. Come join us at “insert event name”
• Subject Line: Check our new website, what’s your opinion?

So, you can easily convince them to go through the email. And it will push them a step forward to take the next action that you want to do them.

7. Take the Advantage of Funny Email Subject Line

A humorous subject line can elevate readers from day to day monotonous work. If you find it relevant to your readers and the email content then you can definitely use it.

For Example:

• Subject Line: It’s Our Birthday, but YOU Get the Gifts
• Subject Line: An Offer You Can’t Refuse

But before implementing you must have clear knowledge over your target audience.

8. Add Number and List into the Subject Line

Human brains are naturally attracted by digits. So, you can insert a number into the subject line to draw the attention of your users. Usually, it is easy to read and understand the list instead of plain text.

For Example:

• Subject Line: Last 8 Hours | 50% discount + a gift inside
• Subject Line: 3 effective ways to increase your traffic

Therefore, recipients also prefer to read the listed content. It is comparatively easier to process for them. So, the subject line with numbers attracts more subscribers and makes them convinced to hit the mailbox.

9. Insert Question or Other Punctuation in Email Subject Line

Question marks or other unusual punctuations can be another attractive way to allure the subscribers. Exclamatory (!) is also useful but it has been used so frequently. So, you can try something new that helps you to stand out of the mass.

For Example:

• Subject Line: 👀 Did you miss the biggest Deal of the Season?
• Subject Line: Dazzling Christmas Deal (35% OFF) on WP Project Manager!

However, you can experiment with some funny and strong punctuation indeed. After that, based on your audience response you can customize the next subject lines.

10. Add an Emoji in Your Subject Line

A subject line with emoji gives you a chance to build emotional engagement with your readers. Aside from the fact that using emoji creates contrast in your recipients’ inbox, research has proved that emoji will make your message more memorable.

For Example:

• No monsters, only ‘25% DISCOUNT’ is on its way 🎁
• Opportunity to Maximize Your Revenue Stream 💵

Brands that are using emojis gets a 56% increase in their email open rates. If you can use emoji appropriately in the subject line it will undoubtedly attract the readers’ eyeball.

11. Keep the Email Subject Line in Right Character Length

As we have mentioned above the subject line must be short and concise. You should ensure that the users can read the full subject line from any device. Otherwise, they may miss the punch line or important news.

Almost 70% of all emails are read on mobile devices. So if your subject line is too long then it might be get cropped. So, it is the best practice to keep subject lines within 50 characters so that readers can overview the entire subject line at a glance.

iPhones show about 35-38 characters in portrait mode, and Galaxy phones show roughly 33 characters in portrait mode.

For example, use ‘Increase the traffic by 60%’ rather than ‘How to increase your traffic’.

12. Create Trust and Curiosity through the Subject Line

Write a subject in a way that invokes interest in the recipient’s mind. Also, your subject line must build trust among the readers. It will provoke them to click on the email.

Instead of telling “Woman donates more than man” you can set the subject as “Who donates more; men or women?”. The second one will create more curiosity among the subscribers. Thus, it will increase the email open rate largely.

Moreover, you can give them a feeling of urgency and influence them to take quick action. If they get the realization of missing any amazing deals or events, they will definitely go through the email. However, it must be relevant and well optimized. Otherwise, it can be left by the readers as spam.

13. Subject Lines that Introduce a Story

Most of the people love to read the story instead of boring text. And a subject line is the best place to release the teaser of your story. It can trigger your readers’ emotions to grow interested. Later this engagement will inspire them to read the email body.

For Example:

• Sara started her own online marketplace using Dokan
• Aspiring Success Story of an Educational Institute

Now you have all the components of how to write an email subject. Although you need a strong grip over your audience preference and emotion. It helps you to write an optimized email subject line for networking with a great open rate. In addition, you should consider the following attributes while writing a subject indeed:

• Avoid using ALL CAPS
• Use Trendy Topics and Headlines
• Avoid making false promises
• Start with action-oriented verbs

Furthermore, Lewis outlines six “marketing motivators” in his book. These emotions can influence a reader to act effectively. It increases the response rate for direct mail, which we can also include in our subject lines. They are:

• Fear
• Exclusivity
• Greed
• Guilt
• Need for approval
• Anger

If you can tap into these emotions with your email subject line, there is an immense chance to trigger a response from the readers. Also, it will help you to get better email open rates.

How to Write Good Subject Lines

You can write a better subject line for your Email Campaign by following these simple six steps. But it requires more and more practice to become pro in writing subject line copies.

Though these tips and tricks are useful, but it will be the best practice to conduct A/B test for your subject lines. Email A/B testing will help you to identify what type of subject line get more response from your audience. It will assist you to know what brings more clicks from your recipients. Later, you can improvise the subject line according to the result.

Examples Regarding Email Subject Line for Networking

Let see some practical examples that can improvise your Email Open Rate.

FOMO — the Fear Of Missing Out

• Uber: “Grab a ride pass before they’re gone”
• Airbnb: “Barnstable is in high demand for August”
• weDevs: Once in a Lifetime Deal – Save Up To 60%

Curious Subject Lines

• UX Collective: “Your fingerprints are all over the place”
• Instant Boss Club: “80 likes to 458 likes SAY WHAT?”
• weDevs: “WordPress vs. Medium, and The Winner Is…..”

Funny Subject Lines

•  Grubhub: “Breaking chews! We found new restaurants near you!”
•  NextDraft: “OMGodfather”
•  Dollar Shave Club: “Open up and say wowie zowie!”

Pain Point Subject Line

• Adobe Stock: “Beautiful brochures made faster”
• Terrain: “Your all-weather dining solution.”
• Dokan: “Get $500 Worth Dokan Maintenance Service for FREE – weCare”

Emoji Subject Line

• JustFly.com: “✈ SEAT SALE: Boston to Las Vegas!”
• ClassPass: “Go from 🌱 to 🌳 for just $4”
• Yummly: “🍓 Berry impressive summer recipes”

Get More People to Read Your Emails with Eye-catchy Email Subject Line

Email Marketing is a highly effective marketing tool to reach your prospects and customers. Perhaps, effective email campaigns can convert prospects into customers, and turn one-time buyers into lifetime loyal advisor.

But there are hundreds of companies that try to flood your client’s inbox with the same context as you. To stand out from those competitors and convince the recipients to act in your favor, is not an easy task. In this situation, the email subject line can be your life savior. You can make your email campaign successful by writing an appealing email subject.

You can go through this blog several times to write an appropriate subject line. Because if your email remains unopened then all your investment goes to the drain. And you will not get your desired result from the campaign.