A good cold email subject line can sometimes be the difference between your email being opened and deleted. With that being the case, there is a lot of curiosity in the sales world around what makes a good subject line.
We will try to provide some logic here to help with that, and here are a few concepts to keep in mind when you create your emails:
Try to avoid sounding like a salesperson
Your prospects get sold to a lot. Whether it is incoming emails or cold calls, there is a lot of noise and traffic hitting your prospects from people trying to sell something. With all this noise in the environment, your prospects will be a bit guarded and closed off when they detect someone trying to sell to them.
If you agree, you can incorporate this into your cold email subject line. You can write it so that you don’t sound like a salesperson trying to sell something. In other words, try not to sound like all of those other salespeople so that you don’t trigger guardedness that will get your email deleted quickly.
Here are a few things to consider with that:
- Avoid words written in all caps
- Avoid exclamation points
- Don’t use any of these words or words similar to discount, special price, promotion, purchase now, trial, etc.
- Avoid mentions of the product or service that you sell
Don’t look like a mass email
Your prospects will receive many mass emails (sent to many people at once). When a prospect receives an email clearly sent to many people at once, they can delete it without reading it with greater confidence. In other words, they can delete mass emails with a quicker reflex and without worrying about missing anything.
With that in mind, you can apply this to the cold email subject line you create. Even if your email is a mass email or a one-to-many email, you can still write the subject line so that it does not make this so obvious.
Focus on the problems or challenges that you resolve
The other tips listed focus on minimizing the likelihood of a quick delete or a delete unread. After you take some precautions when writing your cold email subject line, focus on writing something that is enticing or that gets the prospect to open the email.
One thing that can help with this is a mention of the problems or challenges you help fix. In theory, your product or service should address a challenge for the prospect. And the prospects that would fit well with what you have to offer are the prospects that have the problems that you help to fix.
If a prospect has one of the challenges you help fix, they should have some interest in resolving it or learning more about it. This will create a scenario where a cold email subject line that mentions a key challenge or problem you help fix is fairly attention-grabbing for prospects who can relate.
