Subject lines are often an under-discussed subject, especially taking into account how crucial they are to your results as an email marketer.
Fortunately for you, we just prepared a guide that hands you the eight types of subject-lines that get opens and clicks, and explains succinctly how to craft subject lines the easy way.
And we also included a ton of cool examples and ready-made subject-lines that work. Feel free to steal any of these.
Why subject lines are so crucial to get right
Getting more sales and conversions in email marketing tends to revolve around one key metric. And that one metric is engagement. If you increase your engagement, everything else gets better, including deliverability as well as the number of sales and happy customers.
If you want to learn more about this, check out our super popular guide: The one secret to all email marketing profits.
With that said, all engagement in email marketing starts with the email open. If people don’t open your email, nothing else matters. And when it comes to producing email opens, it is the subject line that tends to matter most.
Put in another way, the subject line has an outsized importance on the benefits and profits you can get out of utilizing email marketing. So it is generally a good idea to spend some time learning about subject lines. Fortunately for you, we produced this sweet guide right here with some really cool ready-made examples.
Deliverability and subject lines
Do you know why veteran email marketers with huge lists keep moving to Emercury? It is because most experienced email veterans prioritize something called deliverability.
As most email platforms prioritize toy features over deliverability, that means you’re losing a lot of potential sales every time you send out emails.
Improving your deliverability can involve a couple of things, one of which is moving to a platform that cares about your emails landing in the inbox. And another thing that really helps is boosting your engagement.
And as we already mentioned, subject lines make a big difference in your open rates, and so they improve your engagement in a very direct way. This is something that inbox providers pay attention to, and it represents a big positive signal. That in turn will improve your deliverability rates and result in more of your emails landing in that inbox.
If you want to really improve your deliverability though, consider booking a free demo with us, as we’re obsessed with seeing how we can help you with deliverability. So try and book a demo while I still have time for those.
Example subject lines
Welcome email subject lines
If you’ve read our content, you probably know how important welcome emails are. And if you’re new around these parts, let me give you a quick summary. A welcome email or email series is the one point in time when a subscriber is most likely to engage with your brand, provided you get the subject line right.
If you do get it right, then you automatically improve everything else about your email marketing. The subscriber is more likely to open future emails, and engage and convert in the future.
– So happy to have you here [name]
– Are you new to this? We can’t wait to help!
– Welcome, you made a great decision, and here’s why
– You’re in, here are the next steps
– Welcome to the best [topic] community
– So happy that you joined us
– [Name], personal welcome
– This is just the beginning of something truly great
Subject lines lines that leverage FOMO
Being successful at email marketing has a lot to do with understanding core marketing principles in general. And when it comes to effective marketing techniques, nothing comes close to playing on scarcity and fear of missing out. So in general, it is a good idea to leverage this knowledge to boost those open rates. Notice that a few of these also utilize curiosity as well.
– Are you missing out on these easy saving tricks?
– Did you miss this?
– Double the bonuses, today only
– Your invite inside, valid for 24 hours only
– [Name] Are you missing out?
– These special offers are just too good to miss
– Going, going, almost gone
– We won’t be repeating this special sale
– Grab your coupon before they’re gone
– [Name] you’re missing out on a free upgrade
Personalized subject lines
With a powerful platform like Emercury it is possible to keep a close eye on your subscriber’s customer journey. This in turn lets you personalize the experience that you provide to them. That means sending the right message at the right time to the right person.
Personalized emails are generally based on a unique event that occurs for that one individual. It could be that they open the pricing page, or it might be that they have been a subscriber for exactly 90 days or because it is their birthday.
Also, it doesn’t have to be based on an event unique to them. It might be an event unique to your business, but one that applies to them. For example, if you’re having an event in their city, you would send a personalized email that invites people because you’re in their city next week.
If you run a SaaS, you can take things even further. You might track which features the user has tried, and which ones they haven’t tried yet. And then you can email them based on that. Either to nudge them into trying features they haven’t or to read more about a feature that’s part of a higher tier plan, as to entice them into an upgrade.
– Happy Birthday [Name]
– [Name] A gift to celebrate our anniversary
– Were you looking for a good deal? Here’s a coupon
– [Brand] Is coming to [your city] and you’re invited
– [Name] We noticed you haven’t tried our [feature] yet
– That upgrade you wanted is now on sale
There are many ways to personalize with Emercury. This includes leveraging smart segments, utilizing smart personalization, keeping track of events on web properties, as well as responding to changes across your stack with incoming webhooks. If you want to learn more, check out our guide to personalized email.
Fear-based subject lines
Being good at marketing requires understanding the basics of human psychology and why people decide to act. In general the two most common motivators to act are trying to obtain a reward, or avoid and move away from something.
You will sometimes see things in the latter category referred to as pain points. And a lot of effective marketing is about leveraging a desire to get away from, or avoid something that people fear or experience as a pain point in their life or business.
– Implement [feature] without bankrupting your business
– Stop wasting money on [pain point]
– Your [pain point] resolved
– Stop wasting time on ineffective [pain point] solutions
– Easy hacks to solve [pain point] in your business
– Stop losing out on easy sales
– Never lose a potential customer again
Urgency-based subject lines
Leveraging a sense of urgency is another one of those things that are a core concept in marketing. If you can create such a feeling in people, and do it artfully, expect many benefits.
Do note however that I said “artfully”, as it is easy to overdo this and end up looking cheesy or like a desperate clickbait purveyor. It is often hard to strike a balance, but it is a good idea to always think about whether you are right on the line or over the line.
– Our biggest discount yet: Ends in 96 hours
– Your invite is about to expire
– [Promotion]: Only 27 spots left
– Final call: save up to $350
– Final Hours: 40% off is almost gone
– Time-sensitive offer on our hottest courses
– Act fact, save 20%
– Hurry, this offer won’t last long
– Deadline Approaching [Name]
– Last Call: Book your appointment now
– Good News! Free month of [upsell]. Claim now.
Subject lines as questions
This is a very interesting format for subject lines as it tends to work because it is unexpected. Consequently, if you overdo this and use questions in every other subject line, people will catch on and stop opening your emails. So it’s good to use them sparingly.
Additionally, questions work best when they create an “open loop” in the reader’s mind. A loop that they can only resolve by opening the email to get a sense of “completion”.
– Are you using these tricks to boost sales?
– What is the next step for your business?
– Videos or Articles?
– Are you getting enough sales?
– Ever feel like you do too much?
– Ready to [solve pain point] for good?
– Fancy a free month on us?
– The worst mistake [in topic]. Are you doing this?
– Do you agree with this advice?
– Can you beat this?
Curiosity-based subject lines
Here’s a fun fact: people are creatures of momentum. If they don’t open your email, they’re unlikely to come around to it later. However, if they open it out of curiosity, they are likely to continue reading. And then, they are likely to follow through on your call to action.
This means that simply getting people to open your email produces positive results. This is true even if they only opened your email out of curiosity to see what you meant with the subject line.
– Please don’t open this email
– A surprise gift inside
– Is this the best hack in [list topic]?
– Ok, we admit it, the secret is out
– Yes, we’re all doing this
– The truth about [list topic or pain point]
– Just wait until you see this
– Bizzare tricks that actually work to [goal]
– Astonishing ways to [goal] by [method]
– This offer for you, at this price? Unheard of!
Straightforward subject lines
Sometimes it’s good to be clever and use tactics like curiosity, scarcity or other methods to get people to see your offer. At other times, it’s a good idea to be very to-the-point and spell out the offer or the point of the email, right there in the subject line.
And in fact, the main reason we’re sharing 8 types of subject lines here is so that you can vary things a bit more. This is largely because over-using any one tactic will end up backfiring. If every subject line that you send utilizes curiosity or FOMO, you will end up annoying your subscribers.
So in addition to mixing up the other 7 types of “effective subject lines”, feel free to just have descriptive subject lines that aren’t trying to use tricks to produce an open. That will make you seem more genuine.
Do note that you should still be giving them a reason to open the email. You will just do so by spelling out the benefit directly and not utilizing other “tricks”.
– Our top 10 tips to [achieve goal]
– 15% off our pro plan
– The [product feature] has arrived
– Love [brand]? Earn 25$ by referring a friend
– Register for the [topic] webinar
– Save 45% on [xyz], this month only
– Find out what’s coming to [the platform] in October
– We’re launching [new product], here’s an early-bird discount
– Our Black Friday deals are here
– Free webinar to help you [customer goal]
Re-activation subject lines
One of the best tricks used by super-profitable email marketers is to utilize re-engagement and re-activation “win back” campaigns. These are basically special efforts where you find ways to get engagement from subscribers who’ve otherwise gone passive or stale.
If you want to learn more about this, consider our super popular guide: “Create a Killer Re-Engagement Email Campaign”. And with that said, let’s look at some example subject lines here, as that might also give you some cool ideas.
– Is this goodbye?
– We haven’t seen you in a while
– [Name] We’ve Missed You! Here’s 15% off of everything
– A full month for free. Because we miss you.
– 24 new features since you last tried [product]
– Was it something we said?
– We’ve been busy since you last tried [product]
– Should I stay or should I go?
– I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work
Get A Partner On Your Side
There’s no need to go at this alone. While we do put out a lot of free content to help you, nothing beats a one-on-one conversation. In these articles we try to help clarify things as best as possible. However, every business is different, so we have to generalize.
If you want to understand better how to implement email marketing in your specific business, let’s have a chat. At the moment I am still able to do some free demos, so be sure to book one while I can still do these.
I would love to hear about your specific needs, challenges and any confusion you might have about best practices. And then, help you see how you can use Emercury to improve your bottom-line.
Alternatively, or in addition to booking a free demo, you can also grab a username for our forever-free-plan while we still have it. It’s probably the most generous email marketing automation plan on the planet. We include almost every feature in this plan, with very few restrictions.
Remember, you get to keep this plan for life, for free… Provided that you grab a username while registrations are still open. Be warned, we might decide to pull this way-too-generous offering at any point. So click that link to check if we still allow registrations.
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