Why does the start of a subject line matter more than the rest?#
Because a list of mail is a column of truncated lines. A phone shows somewhere between the first handful of words and the first line, a desktop shows more, and the cut happens mid-word with no apology. Nobody publishes the exact width for your reader's app, because it is not one number: it moves with their font size, their screen and whether they have a preview pane open.
So the rule that holds everywhere is the same one a newspaper uses: put the fact at the start. Swimming gala Wednesday 11 November gets read even when the rest is cut. Do not miss our wonderful November newsletter gets cut at the word that mattered.
How do I write a subject line that gets opened?#
- Write the body first. A subject line for an email you have not written is a promise you cannot keep.
- Name the one thing in it: the date, the amount, the person, the decision.
- Put that thing in the first four words.
- Delete anything the reader already knows, including the word newsletter and the word update.
- Read it as if you received it from a company you have never met. If it makes you suspicious, rewrite it.
That is the whole method, and it works for a job application as well as a campaign. Everything else people tell you about subject lines is either a vendor's blog or a trick that worked once on a large list.
| The email | What the line has to do | The usual mistake |
|---|---|---|
| A campaign to your own list | Say what is inside, in the words your reader would use | Announcing that there is news |
| A job application | Name the role, and anything that places you | A line that repeats the letter underneath it |
| A complaint | Give the number and the date so it can be filed | Caps and punctuation, which move it down the queue |
| A meeting request | Name the decision rather than the meeting | Catch-up, which a calendar refuses |
| A cold intro | Prove you wrote to this person and not to a list | A clever line with no reason in it |
| Mail to a friend | Almost nothing, since your name is the reason it gets opened | Worrying about the line at all |
How long should an email subject line be?#
Short enough that the whole thing survives on a phone, which in practice means six to ten words and no more than one clause. A subject line that needs a comma is usually two subject lines, and the reader is choosing between them in a queue while walking.
There is a stronger reason to keep it plain than a character count. A long subject line is the shape of a fraud message, because a scammer has to talk their way into an open while the real sender only has to say what the email is. If you cannot tell your reader what you are talking about in eight words, the email itself is the problem.
What are good email subject line examples for marketing?#
| What was written | What works instead | The difference |
|---|---|---|
| Your monthly newsletter is here! | Two hundred homes, and one roof | A label versus a fact |
| NEW! Check out our latest offers | The Friday delivery cut-off is 2pm | Announcing that there is news, versus being the news |
| Do not miss this opportunity | Three seats left for Tuesday | Pressure, replaced by a real number that does the same job |
| We miss you xoxo | Your cart from Thursday, still there | Guilt, versus a fact the reader may want |
| Re: quick question | Question about the Ash Street quote | A fake Re:, which is a lie about the thread |
The column on the left is not a straw man. Those are the shapes every small business sends because they read as professional, and each one spends a little of the reader's trust to say nothing.
What about subject lines for a job application?#
The recruiter is searching a full mailbox on a phone. Say what the email is and which role, in the first words, and put your name where they will look for it.
- Application: warehouse team leader, Leeds
- Frontend developer, referral from Dana Doyle
- Interview Thursday 2pm, confirming
- My application for the March post, with one question
What kills one of these: Resume, Hello, a job reference number nobody memorised, and a subject line that repeats the first sentence of the letter below it.
What is a good subject line for a complaint?#
A complaint gets triaged by a machine and then by a person with a queue. The subject line is the filing label, so give it the account, the date and the thing, and keep the anger for the body where it can be answered.
- Account 4481: second missed collection, 14 and 21 October
- Invoice 2216 charged twice, refund requested
- Fault on the boiler installed 3 September, no heat
- Complaint about order 90312, item arrived damaged
All caps, three exclamation marks and the word URGENT do nothing except move a message to the bottom of a pile that a person reads on their way to lunch. A dated, specific subject line is harder to park.
How do I write a subject line for a meeting request?#
Name the decision, not the meeting. People protect their calendar from a word like catch-up and will move anything that says what it settles.
- Approve the December budget, 20 minutes
- Thursday 11am for the kitchen quote?
- Need your sign-off: Ash Street plans
- Weekly 1:1, moved to Friday because of the dentist
What subject line works for a cold intro or networking?#
The shortest honest sentence about why you are writing to this particular person. A cold email earns an open on relevance, not on cleverness, and a cute line buried under a stranger's name reads as a mail shot.
- Question about your pricing page
- The export job you mentioned in your post
- Two of our clients had this problem, one did not
- Introduction from Priya, ask about one vendor
What about a subject line for a friend?#
Email between people who know each other survives being empty, because the name in the sender field is the reason to open. If you are writing to a friend and worrying about the subject line, the problem is the relationship, not the wording. Say what it is about in three words and let the message do the rest.
This is also a useful reminder for business mail: the sender name is doing the work whether you like it or not. A subject line from a person called Sam keeps its value; one from no-reply at a company has to carry everything alone.
Should I put the reader's name in the subject line?#
Only if the name is right and every one of them will be filled. A merge token that fails on one row in five sends a stranger their own placeholder, and a reader who sees their name used wrongly decides the sender does not know them.
If you have a list where the names came from a spreadsheet of dubious quality, put the name in the body where you can control the fallback, and never in the subject. In Campaign Kicker the pre-send check tells you which tokens cannot be filled before the send goes, which is the cheapest way to find out.
Do emoji in a subject line help?#
They change what the line costs rather than what it says. An emoji makes a line stand out in a list of plain ones and makes it look like everyone else who used one, and it can arrive as a square on a mail app with no font for it. For a sender with a small list and a real relationship, the arithmetic is not favourable: you are buying a second of attention with a category.
What is the difference between a subject line and a preview text?#
The subject is the label; the preview is the line under it, filled by whatever the mail client finds first in your body. Written deliberately, the two form one sentence. Left alone, the preview reads Unsubscribe | View in browser, or a wall of code, and the subject line then has to do the whole job.
Write the pair together, so the subject asks and the preview answers, or the subject names the thing and the preview gives the date.
How do I test which subject line works?#
One variable at a time, on two halves of a list, and only when the email is not time-sensitive. If the sends differ in subject, body and audience all at once, the winner tells you nothing about what to do next month.
A small list is the honest problem here. Split two hundred names and each half is a hundred, where one person's mood moves the percentage by a point. Below a few thousand recipients, a subject line test is closer to a coin toss than a measurement, and the better use of the send is to write the line well rather than to prove it.
Campaign Kicker runs an A/B subject test on a send: you write both lines and it splits the audience. It starts when you press send, so a test and a schedule do not go together, and each half is reported separately.
What subject lines get an email filtered as junk?#
- Money words with numbers and no context: WIN, FREE $$$, CASH.
- All caps, or a run of punctuation used as a substitute for meaning.
- A Re: or Fwd: on a message that was never sent.
- A subject line that does not appear anywhere in the body.
- A blank subject, which is the shape of a mailer that broke.
- Same line sent to a cold list every week, which trains the filter as well as the reader.
None of these are about magic words. They are the shapes a filter has learned to associate with a sender who does not know its readers, which is why an honest specific line is also the safest one. Why email lands in spam works through the rest.
Why did my open rate move when I changed the subject line?#
Usually because something else changed with it: the day, the audience, the sender name, or whether the last send annoyed anybody. A subject line is one variable in a comparison you are not controlling, and the open itself is a counted picture rather than a decision. How open rate is calculated covers why the number moves on its own.
Before a send leaves, Campaign Kicker checks the things that make a subject line fail: unfilled variables, a missing subject, an audience that has not consented, and the caps and complaints it cannot fix for you. Two lines on one send, and it splits them and reports each half. The free plan mails 5,000 emails a month, no card.
Write and test a subject line