Hi friend,

I may have seen my absolute favorite subject line of all time. It was so clever I had to share it with you.

The subject line “Monica, Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Phoebe, Joey & YOU!” was sent by Raymour & Flanigan, a furniture company, to promote their Friends & Family Sale.

Check it out:
 

In case you don’t know Monica, Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Phoebe, and Joey are the characters of the hit TV show from the late 90s - early 2000s FRIENDS. I’m sure you know FRIENDS, who doesn’t, heck my teenage kids know FRIENDS.

Kudos to Raymour & Flanigan for standing out in my very crowded inbox.

First you grabbed my attention by listing the FRIENDS characters and connecting it with me by adding “YOU”, like I was going to get a cup of coffee at Central Perk (FRIENDS reference) with my best friends.
 

But the concept really worked because when I opened the email they beautifully linked the subject line to the purpose of the email - “promoting the friends and family sale”.

Think 🤔 of how many emails you receive a day. 

Personally I get at least 40+ a day. Most of those I delete right away. My inbox is filled with emails from newsletters I enjoy reading, bill notifications for my utilities, and companies I’ve bought something from.

So what makes this a truly great subject line. And more importantly, how can we learn from this example so you can create the next great subject line.

Remember your goals

Your email could have different goals - make a sale, drive store traffic, get views for your video or blog post, or a webinar sign up to name a few.

The goal of your subject line is not to accomplish your email goals, it’s to get someone to open your email. Let the email do the selling.

Think about your subject line, depending on your device, you may have anywhere between 38 - 98 characters to accomplish that goal. Is that enough to get a sale, store traffic, more views, sign ups?

Don’t get caught up in explaining your whole email in those 38 - 98 characters. Your goal with that limited space is to make people so curious they need to see more.

Know your audience

Make the subject line appear relevant to each individual.

Use segmentation to group your audience by similar interests or demographics.

I wonder if Raymour & Flanigan sent the FRIENDS subject line to everyone or did they segment by age. Maybe my parents got a subject line referencing the Brandy Bunch.

Show no fear

Don’t be afraid to take chances. Try some out of the box ideas, you never know they may yield some big results.

If you have a large audience, you can do a 10-10-80 split test for your out of the box ideas. A 10-10-80 split test means 10% of your audience will receive version A, 10% will receive version B, and after a specified period of time the remaining 80% will get the winning subject line.

Time to “wow” your audience

It’s time for you to create a memorable subject line for your audience. Need some additional support?

Get some more subject line best practices.

Here’s a widely asked question: How long should an email subject line be? We did the research to answer this question for you. Get the answer.

Need help coming up with subject lines? We’ve gathered 100+ amazing subject line examples you can steal to make your emails stand out. Here they are.

Use AI to help brainstorm subject line ideas. We wrote a blog post with a subject line generator prompt we’ve been using in AWeber’s AI writing tool.

Start rockin’ with Slash commands

I’m not talking about the guitarist, I’m talking about the slash commands you can use when creating your next email.

We know you have tons of things competing for your attention that make it hard to spend focused time writing to your audience. One of our main goals with our writing tools is to keep you focused and consistently creating.

That’s why we updated the message editor to help keep you in your writing zone when you want to add content or style text in your message.

Typing “/” on an empty line will let you add elements and set text styles right from your keyboard.
 

Add elements to your message right from your keyboard by typing “/” on an empty line. You can add:

• Image
• Video
• Button
• Divider

Set the paragraph style of a new line by typing “/”. Text styles include:

• Headings
• Bulleted lists
• Numbered lists
• Block quotes

This is also how you’ll access the AI writing tool we’re building. If you’re interested in testing that feature before anyone else, sign up for the waitlist.
 

Behind the newsletter

Have you been enjoying Chris and my insights on how we come up with newsletter ideas, why we choose the topics we do, what we’ve used to overcome writer’s block?

Is there anything specific you’d like to know about our process? Reply to this email or leave it in the comments section of the video.

Check out this weeks "Behind the newsletter"

Get our latest expert advice and helpful tips 

As always, thanks for reading!

- Sean and the team
 

👉 Did you notice the images I had in this email? I created and formatted those using Canva without every leaving the AWeber dashboard. 

And you can do it to. Just drag the image icon into your email and the "Design on Canva" drop down will appear to the right of your editor.

It's super convenient, super quick, and super fun. 

Here's how you can do it in your AWeber account.