When’s the last time you received an email from a source you didn’t recognize, and were curious enough to open it? If you’re anything like us, it was probably quite some time ago. Because we’re now so numb to spam, if we don’t like the look of an email the moment it arrives in our inbox, it gets deleted without a second glance. That’s good news for our clean and tidy inboxes. It’s bad news, however, for anybody who relies on email marketing as a way of generating business. There are even people who think that email marketing as a concept is dead, because Generation Z doesn’t engage with it.

We don’t think that’s completely true. While the very youngest adults might consider email to be passe, millennials are still spending more time checking emails than anybody else. Unless the target market of your business us under 25s, there’s still a large audience out there who would be receptive to an email if it looked like something they wanted to open. Therein lies the problem.

To stand any chance of your intended recipient even reading your email, you need a subject line that’s going to entice them to open it. That’s easier said than done. If it’s obviously a sales email, it’ll be ignored. If it’s too vague, it’ll be dismissed as spam. You need to pitch whatever it is you’re trying to interest them in absolutely perfectly – and you need to do it in as few words as possible.

If your email open rates leave a lot to be desired when the results of your marketing campaigns come in, then the subject line is probably to blame. Wherever you’ve gone wrong, we’ve put together a few guidelines that will help you get it right.

1. There Is No ‘Catch-All’ Subject

You can’t catch everybody with one great email. If your email marketing campaign is all based around sending one email, with one subject, you’re going to miss the mark. Different people will have different triggers. What works for one potential customer may not work for another. Some of your audience will be pulled in by offers. Others will be drawn in by an element of mystery. You should have at least three different email subjects lined up and ready to go when you start your campaign. Even if the content of the email is exactly the same, you need three different (and good) subject lines to use as pitches, and persuade people to open it.

2. Special Offers Work

People will always look twice at discounts to see if it’s something they might be interested in. If your subject line starts with ’10 % off’ or ’20 % off,’ you can usually be sure that you’ll hold the reader’s attention at least for long enough for them to finish reading the subject line. What they do with it after that point will depend on whether they’re interested in whatever it is you have to sell. If you have the capacity to give something away free of charge – whether it’s a physical item or a digital one – that’s also a good bet for a subject line. If the potential benefit of opening an email appears to be greater than the few seconds it will take someone to do so, they’ll probably open it.

3. Immediacy Drives Action

How many TV commercials have you seen where someone is telling you that you only have a few days to take advantage of an offer? The idea that something is available right now – but might not be tomorrow – might be the difference between somebody opening an email, and someone leaving it unread in their inbox for a while. You can even combine this with the last tip, so your subject line might read something like ’20 % off (your product) for the next 24 hours.’ This won’t work every time you send out an email, because if you give the impression that all of your emails are urgent then by default none of them will be. Save it for when you really do have something great to offer – or some stock you need to shift quickly.

4. Clarity Of Purpose

What are you selling, and are you explaining it in two or three words? It’s no use offering people money off something for a limited amount of time if they don’t understand what they’re supposed to be buying. If you want inspiration for his, check out a mobile slots website, or its sister sites. Nobody does ‘clarity of purpose’ faster or better than mobile slots sites. In the mobile slots industry, customers flit from site to site looking for the deal and games package that suits them best – so if they don’t see what they’re looking for immediately, they’ll move on. That’s why when you log onto one, you’ll be left in no doubt what they’re there to do. A typical slogan on a mobile slots website will say something like ‘Win Up To 500 Free Spins On Slots Now’. That would make the ideal subject line for an email marketing campaign, and that’s the mark you’re looking to meet.

5. Active Words, Not Passive Words

You probably won’t even realize this until someone points out that you’re doing it, but the use of active words as opposed to the use of passive words is a major thing in marketing. It’s a simple language trick which makes a sentence seen more exciting and enticing. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you were trying to tell your customers that you had 25% off shoes this week this week. The passive way to tell them would be simply to say ’25 % off all shoes this week only,’ which might get some responses. You’ll find you get more responses, though, if you lead with ‘Save 25% on shoes this week only,’ and it’s all because you have that little action word right at the start of the line. It’s an invitation to come and do something, and if they carry on reading, they find something that could potentially be to their benefit. If your email has landed at the right time, in front of someone who was thinking about buying shoes, you should have their full attention.

Naturally, there’s more to email marketing than just making sure you get the subject line right. Getting the content right is just as important, and the time of day you’re sending your emails is critical, too. You’ll find information about all that elsewhere on our site. Thanks for stopping by and reading our guide to sharp email subject lines. We hope you found it useful!

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