Ever Wondered Why Your Email Marketing Isn’t Working So Well? It could be All Down to One Little Sentence…
Let me ask you this. How many emails do you receive every day? If you’re like me, you receive a heck of a lot. Now let me ask you another question:
How many of those emails do you actually click on and open?
I was shown an email recently and asked the question “Nige, why do you think hardly anybody opened this email?”
The email subject line was “Company Name Newsletter” (just to be clear, it actually said the name of the company not “Company Name”!)
I’m struggling to think of a more useless and boring subject line.
Why does this matter?
Well, because when people are looking at their inbox, it takes just a fraction of a second for them to decide whether to open an email or delete it. We’ve all done it. We’re looking down a list of emails that have come in and there are only really two elements to help us decide whether to open that email or bin it. One is who it is from and the second is the subject line. That’s why it matters such a lot.
And let me tell you now, the tiniest of tiny percentages of your customers will be excited enough to click on an email that’s entitled “Company Name Newsletter”. They really don’t give a flying fish about your newsletter or your company. What they really care about is what you can do for them.
Don’t get me wrong, writing good subject lines that get emails opened is a skill on its own. But you have to remember it’s so critical to get that email opened. Otherwise you could have written the best and highest converting email ever written in history…
…but nobody opened and read it as the subject line was rubbish.
48 Email Subject Lines to Get Them Opened
To help you out, here are 48 subject lines that we’ve used that have had the highest open rates:
- Need my help?
- This is important
- Did you miss this yesterday?
- Bad news…
- Bad news & good news….
- Good news for people who love bad news…
- CONFIDENTIAL
- Last Friday I was scared…
- …this sale is a secret
- We can’t offer this all day…
- I’d love to know what you think of this [INSERT NAME]
- We love you. To show our appreciation we’re giving you…
- As a special thanks for popping in last week here’s a 20% discount
- Winners Announced
- I have a problem
- Don’t do this…
- I need to ask you a question…
- I couldn’t keep this a secret
- The lie you’ve been told about XXX [Insert relevant topic here]
- Disturbing truth…
- Keep reading or miss out big…
- Only stupid XXX will ignore this
- Here’s the bad news about [insert niche]
- Five ways to avoid [insert problem you’ve solved]
- [Their first name]…a quick heads up
- [Their first name]…I’ve got an idea to run past you
- The information [first name] requested
- Sorry [first name] I’ve got to disagree
- My favourite [insert niche] tool
- The Ultimate [insert niche] Cheat Sheet
- How I get [insert benefit] in [insert short timeframe]
- Only open if you want to [insert transformation you provide]
- Arrested for [insert big benefit]?
- Stop [insert problem the prospects want solved]
- You won’t believe what [insert intro to crazy story]
- A scientific way to [insert big benefit]
- I blame Kevin Costner…
- Did we have an appointment?
- Here’s what you’re missing…
- Things Just Got a Little Bit Better
- I Thought I Was Smart
- You Won’t Believe This.
- Really?
- Just an idea…
- Can you help, please?
- A difficult email to write…
- This is a bit embarrassing
- Can we meet?
You can see that all these titles are intriguing to some level. They’re designed to tweak people’s curiosity and get them to click to at least read the message and see what it’s all about. That’s what you need to do to get your emails opened.
Happy emailing …
