Login

Hi there friend,

I find the hardest, and most stressful, part of writing these newsletters is coming up with the subject line.

I’ll write a newsletter, pat myself on the back because I think it’s awesome. Then I have to convince you that the content inside this email is worth your time. And I only have about 60 characters to do so (plus the pre-header).

The subject line doesn’t matter to everyone. There are two types of people who open your emails:

1 - Those that find the subject line interesting and want to learn more

2 - Those that open because of the value you’ve already provided them so they look forward to your emails

Personally, I subscribe to dozens of newsletters, so you could imagine the number of emails I get in a day. But there are two, Matthew Berry and Smerconish, that I don’t even look at the subject line. When I see those newsletters in my inbox, I want to read what they have to say.

But that’s two out of dozens of emails I receive a day. Those others have to work for my attention.

I'm sure some of the readers of this newsletter will see “AWeber” and open it because they know we always write awesome content (I hope you’re one of them). But I know (as does Chris V. who also writes these newsletters) that I need to grab the attention of everyone else. 

I believe I have a pretty good pulse on what works. 7 out of 10 of our highest opened emails this year are from subject lines I came up with. Side note: this is driving Chris V. crazy because we have a friendly competition going on (more on that later).

I’m sure you’re wondering - “what’s the secret formula?”. How am I beating Chris (editor’s note from Chris: 😡) and coming up with subject lines that generate a high open rate?

I hate to be the one to tell you this - there is no secret formula. There are blog posts you can find online that give you some best practices (we have one). And the best practices are good for generating ideas. 

Ultimately it comes down to knowing your audience and what they respond to. I can tell you what works for AWeber subscribers, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for your subscribers. Every audience is different.

So how can you start learning what will work for your audience? 

Here’s what I’ve done (and some things you shouldn’t do) to start creating subject lines that will grab your audience’s attention.

Subject line grader

First let’s start off with what not to do. Don’t rely on a subject line grader. These tools claim to help you write click-worthy subject lines by providing a score as to the likelihood your email will get opened. 

Think about it, if every audience is different, how can one tool grade a subject line?

To show you what I mean, I took a subject line from an email that had one of our highest open rates and another that had one of our lowest open rates. Here were the results:

Subject Line: Bad, Okay, Amazing - What’s your audience feeling

Open rate: 45.07% (top 10)

Subject line grader score: 40

Subject Line: Your emails, but better

Open rate: 32.98% (bottom 10) 

Subject line grader score: 64

Write multiple subject lines and vote

I know, I started off this newsletter talking about how challenging it can be to come up with one subject line, now I’m suggesting you write more than one.

And yes, that’s exactly what I’m recommending.

For every newsletter I’ll write at least 3 subject lines, then I’ll ask some of my co-workers what they like best. Everyone has different opinions, but if multiple people pick the same one, I feel pretty confident.

Here were my ideas for this newsletters:

You may be a team of one, but that doesn’t mean you can't ask your spouse, partner, parents, friends, really anyone, what they like better.

I also feel there are a couple other benefits to writing multiple subject lines:

1 - sharpens your skill writing them

2 - allows you to think outside the box. Throw something crazy out there and see what people think.

Ask AI for help

If you’re struggling to come up with a subject line, ask AI. 

You don’t need to use what AI generates, but it may trigger an idea.

You can even ask the AI writing assistant in the AWeber message editor to come up with a few subject line ideas. Here’s how to use AI in your AWeber account.

Make it a competition

Maybe this is just the way I think but I believe competition really gets the creative juices flowing.

Chris and I have a lot of fun with this, if you can even call it a competition since I dominate the top opened emails (see I even playfuling joke in the newsletters).

Chris even took to X (formerly Twitter) to talk about our competition.

As I mentioned earlier, if you don’t have co-workers, ask your family or friends to come up with a subject line. Then take some pride in coming up with subject lines that generate higher open rates.

Observe and learn

If you take one piece of advice, this is it. This is what really turned me into a pretty good subject line writer because I started to learn what style/format you responded to.

Look at your top 10 highest opened emails, look at your bottom 10 lowest opened emails. 

Can you draw any conclusions? Is there a style your audience responds to a little more?  

Let’s take a look at our top and bottom 10 from the past year. What can we learn?

Top 10 Subject lines by open rate

Bottom 10 Subject lines by open rate

My conclusions:

• The 📈 emoji is used in 4 of the bottom 10. Maybe we shouldn’t use that.
• 5 of the subject lines start with an emoji.
• We’re more direct in what the email is about in the bottom 10 (for example: How to create a paid newsletter) vs teasing what the content is about in the top 10 (for example: Are you okay with boring? We aren’t). Invoking curiosity seems to work with our audience.
• 4 of the top 10 we’re asking a thought provoking question (for example: Are you forgetting about this important email?)

Test

It should come as no surprise that “testing” is on this list. Testing email subject lines is a great way to learn what’s working (here’s how to create a split test).

If you’re stuck between two subject lines you feel are strong, test them.

But don’t test for the sake of testing. I would test a theory, not a subject line.

What do I mean by that? Here’s a few examples:

• Do questions lead to higher open rates?
• Do emojis lead to higher open rates?
• Is shorter or longer better?

Don’t test your theory once. Test it multiple times. You want to make sure you see similar results with multiple emails before you conclude one is better than the other.

Become the next subject line champ

Now it’s your turn. Start applying these concepts when coming up with your subject lines. And as always let me know how it goes. 

What did you think of this email?

❤️❤️❤️ Loved it. Can't wait to get the next one.

💔 I didn't really care for it.

Ask your AI writing assistant

As much as I like to brag to Chris that I come up with better subject lines, sometimes I need a little inspiration. So when I run into a creative roadblock, I’ll ask AI right in the email builder. 

When you ask the AI writing assistant in AWeber, this uses the same engine to generate a response as ChatGPT, so outcomes are going to be very similar.

Here’s a prompt that I use that can help you get started:

Write a subject line and preheader for my email message. It should be intriguing enough to get someone to notice it in their inbox and choose to open it to learn more about what is inside. The subject line and preheader should each be no longer than 50 characters. 

If you need some other AI prompts for your email - check out this content on How to write AI email marketing prompts that actually work

Holiday Marketing Tip:

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are right around the corner. Use that sense of urgency in your next email by adding a countdown timer.

Let the clock do your talking.

One common tactic is to attach a countdown timer—down to the minute—with a discount code in your email. Near the time you can add something like: “time left to redeem".

Here’s how to add a countdown timer to your emails.

Share your thoughts

Do you help guide and educate others to reach their goals? We want to hear from you.

Take the survey

Get our latest expert advice and helpful tips 

As always, thanks for reading!

- Sean T. and the rest of the AWeber team