From the ClickZ Advanced Email Marketing blog, here are some brain-science-based ways to create better subject lines: Email Subject Lines and the Brain. Try these:
- Use Certain Emotional or Personal Words to Grab Attention: The recipient's name, or certain other "trigger words," like free, limited, urgent, need, etc.
- Increase the "Standoutness": Make your subject line different from the others. Longer, shorter, stranger.
- Don't Habituate Your Subscribers: If your subject line is always the same, you're training recipients not to pay attention. Vary it.
The inbox is a crowded place, and your subject line is a very tiny canvass for capturing interest. We need to put a lot of attention (and testing) on those subject lines.