Tip of the Week: Learning How to Create Effective Email Subject Lines

Ever get an email with the subject line “No Subject” and not feel compelled to open it? Us too. Your email subjects are crucial to getting a user’s attention and helping them understand what the email is about. We’re here to help you develop more effective email subjects to ensure your messages are opened and responded to.

Email Subjects Benefit the Reader
One of the biggest things to keep in mind for your organization’s subject lines is that the subject is there to help the reader determine what is (and isn’t) worth your time. For example, it’s easy to see how a message with a generic subject line could be avoided, simply because nobody knows what the message contains. This is especially important for messages that go out to a lot of people.

Subject Lines Shouldn’t Be the Entire Message
That being said, you shouldn’t have the entire message be in the subject line, either. The subject line is only meant to give the reader the idea for what the message is about. Save the majority of the message for the message body, or just go to have a conversation with the party in person.

A good subject line should be short enough to be easily consumed, but it should also be a proper summary of what the user can expect to find, with the finer details relegated to the message itself.

Be Sure to Include a Subject
Sometimes you might go through your inbox and find a message labeled “No Subject.” All this shows you is that the sender didn’t find it important enough to warrant a subject. This is a great way to make sure your message is never read, or at least pushed to the bottom of the priority list.

For more great tips and tricks, be sure to subscribe to Horne & Benik’s blog.