Writing a Subject Line Somebody Opens

The conditions it is read in

Not on a screen, carefully, alone. In a list of thirty subject lines, on a phone, while somebody is doing something else.

They are scanning for reasons to skip, because the default action is to skip, and every message is competing with that default rather than with the other messages.

A phone shows roughly the first forty characters of a subject line, sometimes fewer, and the rest is invisible until opened.

So the useful part is the beginning, the reading takes about a second, and cleverness has no time to land.

Specific beats clever

The single most reliable finding, and it runs against how people want to write.

A subject line describing exactly what is inside outperforms one designed to intrigue, consistently, on small business lists.

Three things to check before the first frost is specific. Are you ready for what is coming is intriguing and could be about anything.

The intriguing version gets opened once by people wondering what it is, and then teaches everybody that your subject lines do not describe your messages.

Specific subject lines get opened by the people who want that thing, which is a smaller number and a better one.

Write the subject line after the message, describing what you actually wrote, rather than before as a hook to fill.

What works

• The specific thing the message is about.
• A number, where there genuinely is one.
• A place name, for a local business.
• A question your customers actually ask.
• A deadline, where a real one exists.
• Plain language, the way you would speak.

The third is underused. A local business naming its area in the subject line is immediately distinguishable from every national sender in the same inbox.

What does not

Worth listing because these are the defaults people reach for.

Your business name at the start, which wastes the visible characters on something already shown as the sender.

Newsletter, update, or the month, which describe the format rather than the content and tell nobody anything.

Urgency that is not real, which works once and costs the relationship.

Anything in full capitals, multiple exclamation marks, or the words used by promotional mail generally, which affect both the reader and the filtering.

And questions that could be answered no, which give a reason to skip.

Length in practice

Shorter than most advice suggests, because of where it is read.

Aim for something that works in about forty characters, and treat anything beyond that as a bonus that most readers will not see.

That does not mean the subject must be forty characters. It means the first forty have to carry the meaning, so the important words go at the front.

Boiler service before winter, booking now is complete at thirty-eight characters. We wanted to let you know that our boiler service bookings are open is not, and its first forty characters say nothing.

Read your draft with everything after the fortieth character covered and see whether it still works.

A worked example

A business sent a monthly message with subject lines like April Newsletter and A Quick Update From Us.

Their open rate sat at roughly a fifth of the list.

They changed nothing about the content and started naming the main item instead: How to spot a failing sump pump, Two weeks left for spring bookings, Why your bill jumped in February.

Opens roughly doubled over three months and stayed there.

The messages were the same length, from the same sender, to the same list, containing the same material.

What changed was that the subject line told somebody whether the message was for them, which is the only job it has.

Test on your own list

Because published advice about subject lines is drawn from audiences unlike yours.

Most mailing tools let you send two versions to portions of the list and use the better one for the rest, which costs nothing beyond writing a second line.

On a small list the result is not statistically meaningful from one send, and it becomes meaningful across five or six.

So keep a note of which style won each time rather than treating a single test as an answer.

After half a dozen sends you will know something about your own readers that no general advice can tell you.

Open rates are less reliable than they were

Worth knowing before you optimise against the number.

Open tracking has always been approximate, since it depends on an image loading and many people never load images.

Recent changes to how some mail applications handle images have made it considerably less reliable in the other direction, by loading them automatically whether or not anybody read the message.

Which means reported opens now overstate for some portion of your list, and comparing this year against two years ago is comparing different measurements.

Use opens to compare two subject lines in the same send, where the distortion applies equally to both.

For anything else, watch clicks and replies, which describe behaviour rather than a loaded image.

The counter-case

Subject lines matter less than the two things either side of them.

Who the message is from decides more than what it says, and a recognised local business will be opened with a poor subject line where a stranger will not be opened with a good one.

What is inside decides whether the next one gets opened, so a subject line that oversells produces one good open and a worse list.

There is also a limit to optimisation on a list of four hundred, where the difference between a good and an excellent subject line is a few people.

Write something specific and honest, spend the remaining effort on the content, and send it more often.

Writing one

1. Write the message first.
2. Describe what is actually in it.
3. Put the important words in the first forty characters.
4. Cut your business name from the front.
5. Name your area where it helps.
6. Read it with the end covered.
7. Test two versions and keep a note of which won.

Step two is the whole discipline, and it is the step people skip because describing the contents feels less interesting than teasing them.

What goes inside is covered in the newsletter nobody opens.

Frequently asked questions

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