How to Write an Email Subject Line

Good and Bad Email Subject Lines

Back to the Email TEMPLATES | How to write an Email

Writing proper subject lines is important since most people decide whether to open and read an email on the basis of subject line alone.

Here is a statistics that may shock you: did you know that the “read rate” for commercial email is somewhere around 30%?

That is, 70% of normal non-spam commercial email are NOT read. This is true even for doubled-opted-in lists that people subscribe to voluntarily.

So what decides whether your emails would be among the 30% that is read? Your SUBJECT line. That’s how important it is.

Here are some rules to help you write the best subject line for your emails:

1) Stay away from hype, respect your recipient's time and intelligence, and deliver the promise.

There used to be a time when people used to “experiment” with the subject line and include teaser words like “Incredible!” or “sex” to motivate the reader click and read it. But those days are long gone. Now such cheap tactics and rightfully regarding as “text stuffing.”

If you resort to text stuffing, one of two things will happen:

Here are some spam words that will likely be flagged by spam filters:

FREE, AMAZING, GIVEAWAY, SEX, UNBELIEVABLE, THE BEST EVER, INCREDIBLE, LOTTERY, YOU’VE WON, GET PAID, MEDICATION, GREAT DEAL, PILLS, DRUGS, UNLIMITED INCOME, MILLIONAIRE, etc.

This is the reason why the spammers resorted to cheap tactics like spelling the FREE as “f-ree”, “f.ree” etc. to throw off the spam filter settings and push the message through to your inbox.

However that still leaves unresolved the problem of user dissatisfaction.

When people feel that they’ve been deceived and manipulated, they would not buy your product or they won’t be your readers or friends for too long.

2) Don’t write a subject line that is generic and abstract. Such emails will more often than not be disregarded.

Apply the Golden Principle of “Don’t Make Them Think”. Your subject line should be so clear and obvious (while being short) that people would have a good reason to click and read the rest. If your subject line forces people to think, you’ll lose a part of your readers right away.

For example, imagine the following bad subject lines:

Here are much better subject lines:

How to write a Critical Email

How to write a Signature Block

Return from "How to Write an Email Subject Line" to HOW TO WRITE ANYTHING home page

Have a Great Tip, Photo or Comment About This Topic?

Do you have a great tip or photo about this? Something that you believe we should read or see? Contribute and share it today!