How to Format Email Subject Lines
The average person receives over 120 emails daily, so what will make them open your email? A captivating subject line.
Email subject lines can make or break your email open rates — 33% of people say they only look at the subject line to determine if they even need to open a message. To stand out in a sea of boring email subject lines, try changing the subject line, using formatting, personalization, and more. Spending a few extra seconds on the first thing your reader sees can be the difference between your message getting opened or going straight to the trash.
1. Use Formatting
One of the best ways to catch a reader’s attention? Use formatting in your subject lines. Formatted Email Subject Lines by cloudHQ, a free Google Chrome extension, allows you to use bold, italics, strikethroughs, underlining, and even black and white bubbles and squares to create a visual, engaging subject line.
For example, formatted email subject lines might look like this:
Black Friday Men’s T-Shirts (was $2̶0̶0̶.0̶0̶, now $𝟭𝟬.𝟬𝟬)
New Dog Food NOW Available
Final Follow-Up: Tuesday’s Call?
You’ll immediately stand out in a crowded inbox with an email subject line that brings personality, style, and urgency to your message.
2. Change the Subject Line in an Email Thread
Subject lines can get messy and confusing when there are multiple replies over several days. There are a few reasons you might want to retroactively change your email subject line. First, maybe the conversation got off-topic and needs to be adjusted. Second, perhaps the subject line contains a date or information that is no longer relevant. Also, you might want to rewrite the subject line to make it easier to find in the future.
Gmail doesn’t put the ability to change the email subject line in the most obvious spot, but here are the step-by-step instructions below.
- Open the conversation thread with the subject line you want to change.
- Hit Reply or Reply All at the bottom of the thread.
- Click the arrow pointing left.
- From the drop-down, select Edit Subject.
- The subject line will now be highlighted and ready for you to change!
- Hit Send, and your email will be sent with the new subject line.
3. Use Personalization
Have you ever had an email catch your eye because your name is in the subject line? A personalized subject line can increase open rates by as much as 50%, increasing your leads, sales, and revenue. Even more surprising, most businesses don’t bother to personalize the subject line — 97.7% of emails have no personalization, so this is a major opportunity for your email to stand out.
You can personalize your email subject lines with first name, last name, occupation, birthday, transaction history, location, and more.
For example, these email subject lines might look something like this:
Mary, get 50% off today!
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Directors of Marketing, Read These New Statistics to Guide Your 2022 Strategy
Change Your Email Subject Line in Gmail
For marketers, sales professionals, realtors, lawyers, and even friendly communication with family, spicing up your email subject line is a simple, quick way to ensure your messages are getting opened. Email users only reply to 25% of their emails, and if you want yours to be one of them, try changing the email subject line and utilizing formatting and personalization to make your message stand out.
Formatted Email Subject Lines by cloudHQ is a free Gmail productivity tool that helps you work smarter, not harder, and get more done during your workday.
Download it on the Google Chrome store, and check out cloudHQ’s suite of productivity tools like Export Emails to Google Sheets, Save Emails to PDF, and Gmail Label Sharing.