3 Subject Line Hacks That Will Help Boost Your Email Open Rates
It's been found that 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. That's a lot of pressure on one line of text.
As your busy readers scan their crowded inboxes, your subject line has less than 5 seconds to:
Pique their interest
Preview the content
Prompt an open
And oh yeah, it needs to be 50 characters or less (with spaces).
Because of this, subject lines are one of the hardest pieces of copy to write. I've been writing them continuously for about 8 years, and it's still challenging to say what I need to say concisely – especially if the words I need to use are long.
Sometimes there's just no way around going over 50 characters. Most subject lines are inevitably going to get cut-off in the inbox view.
Over the years, I've learned to work around this by using 3 basic methods (or "hacks") to get the message across in the subject line – even if it isn't fully displayed when readers receive it.
Using one or more of these hacks will help ensure your subject line puts its best foot forward to help your email get noticed and get opened.
Hack #1: Front-load your most compelling content
On mobile devices, subject lines are usually cut-off between 33 and 43 characters (with spaces).
Desktop email clients like Gmail usually display up to 60 characters (with spaces) of a subject line.
This is why it's essential to put the most important keywords at the beginning of the subject line. So even if the reader doesn't see it in its entirety, they still see enough to pique their interest and prompt an open.
This hack is especially useful for highly-regulated industries like pharma that require long product names or extra verbiage to satisfy legal requirements.
You can also use this hack with long, more conversational subject lines. Here's an example from Grove Collaborative:
The full subject line is 69 characters long: Suncare quiz right this way. Find out which one’s best for YOUR skin.
Only the first 42 characters were displayed on my mobile phone's inbox view. But yet, it's still enough to give you a preview of the content (a quiz). The "Find out whic..." acts as a teaser to prompt an open.
Hack #2: Label your content
Related to front-loading, this involves labeling your email's content at the start of the subject line. These labels are usually followed by a colon, though sometimes they're followed by an exclamation point or placed in brackets. This is the easiest and most direct way to tell your readers what they're going to get when they open the email.
Here are examples of some commonly-used labels:
Breaking news:
Video:
Study:
Deal alert!
Podcast:
Latest episode:
[Webinar]
Here are a couple of real-world examples pulled from my inbox:
Hack #3: Use numbers
People love numbers. They're certain and reassuring. And since they're different than letters, they immediately catch your eye when used in a subject line.
A study by Yesware of 115 million emails showed that both open and reply rates were higher when a number was used in the subject line.
Numbers also use much less characters than words, helping you conserve your limited subject line real estate.
Amy Porterfield recently used numbers effectively in a subject line to help tell a story. Not only did the numbers catch my eye, I couldn’t resist opening the email to find out more.
But of course, numbers should only be used if they’re relevant to your email's content. For example, don't cheat by using "4" in place of "for" – unless, of course, it's relevant to your brand or content in some way.
Next steps: Test, test, test
Try A/B testing these hacks (if appropriate) the next time you send an email. Because at the end of the day, it's all about what works for your audience!
