How to Write An Email Using the Best Words in the Subject Line
By • Leave a commentWith everyone’s email box overflowing, how do you get someone’s attention to read yours? Baydin, the company that helps you manage your email inbox, analyzed five million emails and discovered the subject lines that got the most responses and those that did not. I read about this in Tech Journal and you can visit the site to see the complete infographic with all the information that Baydin collected.
But I was most interested in the best words to use in email titles — and the ones to avoid. Five million emails seem like a pretty definitive sample to me. I’ve copied the part of the infographic with the best and worst words. Best words: apply, opportunity, demo, connect, payments, conference, cancellation. Worst words: confirm, join, assistance, speaker, press, social, invite.
Funny about the word “invite.” I tend to read those emails. You know, the opportunity for free food and drinks. But maybe that’s only me.
If you enjoyed this blog post, click below:
Subscribe and receive my blog posts in your email box.
Subscribe to the RSS feed.
Leave a comment
Thanks for the list Jeannette. There were some surprises there and even more on the full infographic. I’ve tweeted both. Nice share!
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Marketer vs Marketing: What Difference Does a Keyword Make?
You’re welcome, Sherryl. I was surprised, too, but it’s good information to have.
Hi Jeannette.
What a Gold Mine, thanks for sharing this. I’m a bit suprised about cancellation though, I would have thought that to be a negative word to use, but hey I might give it a go.
And no you’re not alone on invite, it just sounds like a great opportunity to get out of the house.
Rene — agreed. It does seem counter-intuitive that cancellation would be a good word. But it may be a good word in the negative sense. If you get an email with the word “cancellation” in the subject line you’d want to open it to find out who cancelled something on you.
Interesting Jeannette. Can’t help thinking of how many junk emails I find in spam that have the word payment in the subject line. Maybe the reason they go straight to the junk folder is because someone opened them because of the word payment?
Actually, saw one junk mail with the word cancellation in the subject line recently. Seems some of the guys who flood us with emails we can do without have read Baydin’s advice?
Catarina Alexon recently posted..Do you trust in God but not governments and CEOs?
Catarina — I think I would open an email that said “payment.” It would be interesting to survey some of those people behind the emails to find out why they did or didn’t open emails depending on the subject line.
Interesting article, Jeannette. It’s interesting how certain words just seem to turn people off.
It’s also interesting how many people are reading e-mail before 6 am. I’m certainly not one of them!
Doreen Pendgracs recently posted..chocolate appreciation opens you to flavours of the world
Doreen — I don’t read email at 6 a.m. either. I’m a night owl, though. So I’m often reading email at midnight!
Great list of words to use and words to avoid, Jeannette. I imagine the list of positive words are thought of as “non committal” words which imply that you will not need to spend a lot of time and energy reading those email messages and any actions required will be simple and painless; whereas the negative words imply that you need to take some lengthy action and make a commitment. It would be interesting to understand whether any of these words when used in varying contexts would yield different results.
Andrew Bycroft recently posted..The money is right in front of your face – Part 2