In cold emailing, subject lines are everything.
They provide you with a severely limited window of opportunity (and characters) to convince your recipient that opening your message is worth their time. That means it’s crucial to invest energy into writing killer subject lines.
In fact, subject lines are the sole basis on which 47% of all emails are either opened or discarded.
Here are the best strategies to grab your audience’s attention, keep your emails from being buried under a mountain of unopened messages, and boost your email ROI.
1 – Keep It Short and Snappy
Not only is this generally good advice when you’re trying to get anyone’s attention. It’s particularly relevant for subject lines. That’s because most email clients limit the characters they display in a preview.
In Apple Mail, you have 140 characters to convince. In Gmail, you’re down to 110. And Outlook gives you a measly 55 characters to get your point across.
Anything after that simply won’t show in the preview.
A concise subject line has the added advantage that your email will stand out in the inbox. In fact, some email marketers have had remarkable success with single-word subjects.
As a rule of thumb, however, the sweet spot for subject line length is at about 41 characters – or 7 words.
2 – Stay Relevant and Genuine
Your email content has to keep what your subject line promises.
There is no point in trying to trick recipients into opening your emails.
A “RE: …”, which falsely implies that you already have exchanged messages with your recipient, or a personalized subject line that precedes an utterly generic and cold sales pitch won’t serve you well.
Instead, aim to craft a subject line that reflects the content of your mail.
A highly effective, though slightly overused subject line is “Hi X, quick question?” If you use a line like this, make sure that the email in question really is a quick question, not a rambling sales pitch.
Live up to your subject line.
3 – Experiment with Emojis and Personalization
Let’s admit it – sales emails can be dry.
Personalization and emojis are two good ways to change that.
According to statistics, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. And companies using emojis in their subject lines have found their opening rates surging by as much as 56%.
The reason? When recipients are sorting through their piles of unopened mails, spotting their name or something a little quirky – like an emoji – is likely to capture their attention.
A word of warning, though: You need to employ both emojis and personalized subject lines carefully. Depending on your niche and target audience, you may risk coming across as unprofessional or annoyingly presumptuous.
4 – Establish a Connection
How did you get my address?
That’s what a lot of us wonder when we get an email out of the blue.
It’s also a question you should address in your subject line if possible.
What’s more, having a known point of contact in your subject line has a higher chance of catching your recipient’s attention.
5 – Pique Curiosity, Communicate Urgency
These are two of the oldest tricks in the book, but when it comes to engaging audiences’ attention, they still work like a charm.
Make them curious.
Make them afraid of missing out.
Whether you ask them questions, or imply they don’t have vital information, remind them of limited offers, or warn them that a window of opportunity is closing fast, playing on basic human psychology to rouse interest is an oldie but goodie.
6 – Keep Snippets in Mind
Most email clients include the beginning of the email’s body as a snippet in the preview.
Keep this in mind when crafting your subject line.
The first few words of your mail should complement your subject line, concentrate important information, and further engage attention.
If you’ve got a good email marketing platform, you’ll be able to preview how your email will display in different client inboxes. If you don’t have a dedicated tool, it’s always a good idea to send a test mail to yourself and judge the subject line and snippet based on the preview.
7 – Always Keep Testing
Unfortunately, there is no single perfect cold email subject line.
What works and what doesn’t is hugely dependent on your industry, niche, and audience.
The only way to figure out which subject lines do the trick for you is to always keep testing.
Sending out A/B tests and then carefully analyzing opening rates, click rates, and reply rates will give you invaluable and actionable insights into what resonates with your business’ target audience.
Final Thoughts
Subject lines for cold emails are a tough nut to crack. But they’re more than worth the time and effort that go into the cracking.
The right subject line will boost your opening rates and email ROI. With a bit of creativity, tenaciousness, and repeated testing, you’ll find that killer line.
Holly Chavez
Latest posts by Holly Chavez (see all)
- Lockout Tagout: 4 Aspects of an Acceptable LOTO Policy - June 12, 2020
- How to Write Attention-Grabbing Cold Email Subject Lines - June 10, 2020
hmmm, I’ve been thinking of doing cold email. This made me think again and would have a 90% chance of me pushing with this strategy.
Jay would love you to read ..How White Label SEO Services Helped Me Rise Despite the COVID-19 Pandemic
most important likes you have mentioned, genuine post
thank you sir
vidit would love you to read ..UPPCL 30 Account Officer Posts Recruitment 2020
Email subject lines play an important role. Until and unless the subject is attractive, the emails would get opened up but if its not then you should try out a good subject creator tool. I do concur that headlines in messages are extremely worth the time and exertion. Despite the fact that it requires a great deal of experimentation with various crowds, when you get handle of it, it will deliver profits consequently. In particular like you have referenced, remain veritable.
Writing an email is a different kind of skill which is required in digital marketing as well for general day to day office purposes.
Yes as you have mentioned that the subject of a email should be catchy enough to grasp the attention of that person..And thank you for these effective tips of email writing.I really learnt a lot abut the art of effective email writing.For more such interesting blogs about email writing do visit our website for job vacancy .
Subject lines determine if there would be a high bounce rate or not for the emails you send. It is necessary to pay attention to the subject lines of an email as they matter a lot.
Eddy Abasiada would love you to read ..DANGOTE RECRUITMENT 2020
Great Article Holly! I have been doing cold email marketing for 2 years now and your article is perfect and with relevant information. I would like to suggest you to write an article on cold email marketing tools.
I totally agree with you and one thing really turns me up against anyone emailing me: those subjectlines starting with an RE: from people I have clearly never written an email to – what do they think to achieve apart from making the recipient feel lied to?
And thanks for pointing to the snippets: that is an awesome opportunity to catch my attention even when the subjectline is generic…
Thanks for this article!
Susanna
Susanna Gebauer would love you to read ..What is Internal Linking and How Can You Use it for SEO?
Hi Susanna,
I absolutely agree with you. Lying and being deceptive are huge turn-offs and get immediately ignored — potentially forever!
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Revitalize Your Company by Thinking Like a Customer
I do agree that subject lines in emails are really worth the time and effort.
Though it requires a lot of trial and error with different audiences, once you get grasp of it, it will pay dividends in return.
Most importantly like you have mentioned, stay genuine.

Tekkaus would love you to read ..Pay Fong Middle School Students Built Their Entire School In Minecraft