When it comes to open rates, email subject lines can be make or break. Whether formal or fun in tone, it’s always worth experimenting to find out which phrases increase your open rates. Here are 15 of our favourite sales email subject lines – try them out to see what they can do for you...
To see the best results in email opens, your subject lines should be helpful and informative but without giving too much away. Whether formal or fun in tone, it’s always worth experimenting to find out which compelling phrases increase your open rates.
Here are 15 of our favourite sales email subject lines – try them out and see what they can do for you!
You should never be reaching out to a completely cold lead. Maybe you’ve already connected on LinkedIn, or they’ve been on your site reading some of your content.
Questions usually get answers – and if the question asked relates to something relevant, there's a good chance of an open.
You might have heard the phrase ‘always be closing,’ but this is outdated – we prefer to always be helping. Your prospects will appreciate your offer of assistance.
Why not flip it around and reach out to your prospects to see if they can help you? Try and find out if they are the right person to speak to about what you’re looking for help with.
People love a numbered list, and we like to give things away in threes. If you can provide your prospect with advice or quick wins to tackle their problems, they’re more likely to give you the time of day.
Use this one to follow up with an inbound lead or a website visitor. They're clearly looking for help with a challenge – ask how you can be of service.
After your initial connection, use this positive subject line to re-engage and set up that next call, meeting or demo.
Write three bullet points about how your prospect can get going on their first project, or simply the next steps to resolving the problem they’re facing.
Again, homing in on the power of three – and you can read more on why our brains find it so easy to grasp things in threes here – this subject line holds the promise of feeling organised, and who doesn’t want that?!
A personalised subject line with the promise of a specially picked selection of content is pretty enticing, especially if you take the time to match the blogs to your prospects’ pain points and interests.
Your prospect might have forgotten you’d promised to send some info over (or perhaps you forgot to mention you had a new product sheet burning a hole in your pocket). Whatever, with this subject line, you’ve created enough intrigue to get your email opened.
It might sound a bit ‘Mission Impossible’, but you can’t beat a bit of reverse psychology. Like an email recall, you can guarantee that your prospect will fall into this curiosity gap faster than Wile E. Coyote.
Thanks to The Clash, this subject line will embed an earworm that’s sure to get prospects of a certain age humming. Hopefully the power of punk will supercharge their response!
“So I have a file? That makes me feel important…” thinks your prospect. Trigger the natural politeness with this polite request, which is respectful and efficient.
Sow a seed of doubt and let your prospects know that the door’s still open if they have any second thoughts – it’s light-touch and tactful, without being pushy.
As we’ve already said, always be helping is a strong position to maintain – and that remains true whether you’re at the start of a conversation or simply keeping in touch after a ‘no’. Try this subject line to offer inspiration and reopen communications.