Tips What to Keep in Mind When Creating a Professional Email Subject Line
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2025 4:17 am
The best subject lines communicate something specific and value-oriented to recipients. In other words, they promise something great if the prospect opens the email.
Follow these tips to keep your tricky email subject lines professional, compelling, and effective.
1. Act with personal interest
Your potential customers are looking for number one. You want to be number one, but you don’t want to look like one. You want to be an informant in a world full of “meformers” — people architects email list who produce content to promote themselves. You want to produce content that serves others.
Your emails should have something of value in them, no matter what.
2. Arouse curiosity
In marketing, curiosity is a good thing. It means people are interested and want to learn more.
Think about parenting for a second. If you tell your child that they can't go into a room in your house because there's something there that you don't want them to see, what happens?
Your child will spend the next 1,960 hours trying every spy trick to get into that room undetected. You will have a child who could join the CIA tomorrow without any training.
We are programmed to satisfy curiosity. In the subject line, tease recipients with some valuable information that they can only get by reading.
3. Make an offer they can't refuse
We talk a lot about offers here on the Hello Bar blog. Offers are what make the marketing wheel turn.
Without an offer, you have no takers. It's just common sense, right?
But you need to deliver the best offer at the right time. What will convince your readers to click on your email? A subject line that is irresistible.
Suggest a discount code or coupon
We offer free shipping on all orders for a limited time.
Launch a new product at half the current price
Significantly reduce the price of a package of goods or services
Offers like these make users click, if only to explore them in more detail and decide whether they're worth their time—or money.
4. Offer a quick and easy solution
We like simple and easy things. What can we say? We humans are quite lazy.
If you can offer a quick and easy solution to a real problem, your email subscribers will click. They won't have a choice.
Want to know how to unclog a sink in 60 seconds?
Learn How to Improve Your Email Subject Lines with Two Simple Tricks
Get Rid of Foot Fungus Forever With This Simple Trick
See where we're going? Tease a simple solution to a legitimate problem
5. Create urgency and scarcity
There are two types of urgency and scarcity:
law
Manufacturer
You don't want to create scarcity or urgency. That might have worked 10 years ago, but consumers have become smarter .
Confused? Let me explain.
You've probably heard about the Department Store Pricing Scandal . Consumers took screenshots of product pages on store websites when items were on sale and discounted. The prices were the same.
It's artificial urgency. People think they're getting a good deal, but they're not.
Legitimate urgency and scarcity look like this:
2 days only: 20 percent off your next purchase
Only 5 left: hurry to buy them before they're gone
Memorial Day Sale: Hundreds of Items 10-50 Percent Off!
What's the catch? Each of these promises must be true.
If you tell your followers that you're only discounting your product for two days, you better have the sale end in 48 hours. Likewise, if you say you only have five products left, you better not have 100 stored in boxes in your bedroom closet.
6. Educate your audience
Education is marketing that goes unnoticed.
Gary Vaynerchuk This was proven by his Wine Library TV show, which ran for years on YouTube. Instead of selling wines from his online store, he tasted wines and gave his honest opinions.
Follow these tips to keep your tricky email subject lines professional, compelling, and effective.
1. Act with personal interest
Your potential customers are looking for number one. You want to be number one, but you don’t want to look like one. You want to be an informant in a world full of “meformers” — people architects email list who produce content to promote themselves. You want to produce content that serves others.
Your emails should have something of value in them, no matter what.
2. Arouse curiosity
In marketing, curiosity is a good thing. It means people are interested and want to learn more.
Think about parenting for a second. If you tell your child that they can't go into a room in your house because there's something there that you don't want them to see, what happens?
Your child will spend the next 1,960 hours trying every spy trick to get into that room undetected. You will have a child who could join the CIA tomorrow without any training.
We are programmed to satisfy curiosity. In the subject line, tease recipients with some valuable information that they can only get by reading.
3. Make an offer they can't refuse
We talk a lot about offers here on the Hello Bar blog. Offers are what make the marketing wheel turn.
Without an offer, you have no takers. It's just common sense, right?
But you need to deliver the best offer at the right time. What will convince your readers to click on your email? A subject line that is irresistible.
Suggest a discount code or coupon
We offer free shipping on all orders for a limited time.
Launch a new product at half the current price
Significantly reduce the price of a package of goods or services
Offers like these make users click, if only to explore them in more detail and decide whether they're worth their time—or money.
4. Offer a quick and easy solution
We like simple and easy things. What can we say? We humans are quite lazy.
If you can offer a quick and easy solution to a real problem, your email subscribers will click. They won't have a choice.
Want to know how to unclog a sink in 60 seconds?
Learn How to Improve Your Email Subject Lines with Two Simple Tricks
Get Rid of Foot Fungus Forever With This Simple Trick
See where we're going? Tease a simple solution to a legitimate problem
5. Create urgency and scarcity
There are two types of urgency and scarcity:
law
Manufacturer
You don't want to create scarcity or urgency. That might have worked 10 years ago, but consumers have become smarter .
Confused? Let me explain.
You've probably heard about the Department Store Pricing Scandal . Consumers took screenshots of product pages on store websites when items were on sale and discounted. The prices were the same.
It's artificial urgency. People think they're getting a good deal, but they're not.
Legitimate urgency and scarcity look like this:
2 days only: 20 percent off your next purchase
Only 5 left: hurry to buy them before they're gone
Memorial Day Sale: Hundreds of Items 10-50 Percent Off!
What's the catch? Each of these promises must be true.
If you tell your followers that you're only discounting your product for two days, you better have the sale end in 48 hours. Likewise, if you say you only have five products left, you better not have 100 stored in boxes in your bedroom closet.
6. Educate your audience
Education is marketing that goes unnoticed.
Gary Vaynerchuk This was proven by his Wine Library TV show, which ran for years on YouTube. Instead of selling wines from his online store, he tasted wines and gave his honest opinions.