Looking to improve your email open rate or the outcome of your cold email outreach? A well-crafted sales email subject line will help.
How?
A well-crafted sales email subject line:
- Increases your email visibility in crowded inboxes
- Promotes communication of critical messages
- Increases engagement with sales emails
- Improves your email open rates
So, if you are a sales rep, marketing executive, small business owner, or freelancer who wants to create the best sale email subject lines or improve the outcome of your cold email outreach, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post, we cover the following:
- Ready-to-use sales email subject lines
- How to craft effective sales email subject lines
- Key elements of successful email subject lines
- Strategies for audience-centric subject lines
- How to Integrate sale email campaigns with overall marketing efforts
Ready? Let’s begin!
Table of Contents
Ready-to-Use Sale Email Subject Lines
The subject line of an email is a small part of the email.
However, a huge part of the success of your email campaign rests on creating catchy email subject lines. Reports have shown that almost half of email recipients open emails based on their subject lines, and nearly 70% report emails as spam based on the email subject line alone.
Since your subject line can make or mar your email campaign, it is essential to craft a good email subject line to grab the reader’s attention. When it comes to sales email subject lines, it gets even more dicey because a little too much and you can come off as too salesy.
So, here is an exclusive collection of read-to-use sales email subject lines to inspire you to create sales email subject lines that work. Feel free to steal them.
Funny sale email subject lines
- Savings so epic, even Bigfoot’s impressed
- Savings hotter than a chili-eating contest
- Deals so good, they moonwalk
- Discounts hotter than a pizza roll
- Exclusive offer inside
- Prices lower than my Wi-Fi standards
- Get ready to laugh and shop
- Open, smile, and shop
- Cool kids choose our discounts every time
- Dentist-approved sweetness: our deals are irresistible
Promotional subject lines for general sales
- Spring cleaning your wallet? We’ve got an exclusive deal
- Level up your style! Free gift inside
- Secret sale alert!
- Unlock exclusive discounts with this code
- The countdown is on! ⏱️
- Final hours of our biggest sale ever
- Unlock the door to savings with this limited-time offer
- Your VIP pass to our biggest sale ever!
- Shop smart!
- Dive into our exclusive spring deals
- Don’t miss out on the secret sale!
- Your discount code is here
- Catch the wave of savings – your wallet will thank you
- Upgrade your game! Act now for a 50% discount
Flash sales email subject line ideas
- Flash sale for the next 24 hours only
- Hurry, this deal won’t last long
- Quick! Snag these steals before they’re gone
- Limited-time offer: Treat yourself (without the guilt)
- Psst … We have a secret flash sale just for you
- More deals just for you!
- In the blink of an eye, these deals will disappear! Act now
- Grab these limited-time offers
- Ready, set, shop
- Psst … This flash sale is too good to ignore! Hurry in
Sales email subject line ideas for seasonal sales
- Summer lovin’, summer savings! ☀ ️
- Get ready for beach days
- Fall in love with these fall deals! Cozy up with savings
- Holiday cheer on a budget!
- One-time Black Friday deals inside
- Spread the joy without breaking the bank
- Back-to-school savings!
- One-time deal inside
- Gear up for a new year
- Celebrate [Holiday] in style with our amazing deals!
- Don’t miss these deals
- Savor the season with hot summer deals!
- Wrap yourself in savings this fall! Discover exclusive offers
- Tis the season for budget-friendly shopping!
- Back-to-school blues? Not with these unbeatable savings
- Deck the halls with discounts!
- Celebrate the season with us
Clearance sales email subject lines
- Make way for new! Everything must go
- Last chance to snag these treasures! Prices slashed
- Final countdown! ⌛️ Don’t miss out on these incredible deals
- Say hello to savings! Shop our clearance sale
- Need a reason to refresh? Our clearance has got you covered
- Farewell to clutter, hello to savings!
- Save big with this deal! Time’s running out!
- Snatch up these clearance steals
- Final call for savings! Shop our clearance before it’s gone
- Clear the decks and save!
- Last chance on these slashed prices
- Savings storm alert! Dive into our clearance sale now
Read also: The Best Email Subject Lines For Any Occasion
How to Create Effective Sale Email Subject Lines
As mentioned earlier, you must use catchy email subject lines to grab your audience’s attention.
As such, let’s look at engaging email subject line examples and draw practical insight into creating good sales subject lines that draw the reader’s attention and increase outbound sales.
1. Communicate your offer in clear terms
A good subject line should communicate the message or offer of the email. You must avoid confusion or ambiguity. Also, avoid using misleading subject lines. In this subject line example, Harvard VPAL clearly communicates its offer.
They show what they are offering and the reason behind it; that way, you get what the email is about and decide whether you want to jump on the offer.
Subject lines that do not correctly represent the content of the email will reduce your sender’s reputation over time and may end up in the spam folder.
2. Brevity is the new orange
When creating the best email subject lines, less is more. Short subject lines between 6 and 10 words or less than 35 characters are best.
This way, email recipients across devices can view the entire subject line and understand the email. In this example, Typeform keeps it simple.
The subject line is six words and has less than 35 characters. In addition, a report from Invesp shows that subject lines with 6 and 10 words had the highest open rates, followed by subject lines with less than six words.
3. Draw attention with curiosity
When it comes to email marketing subject lines, curiosity doesn’t kill the cat. Rather, it draws them in. The best email subject lines arouse curiosity.
The Motley Fool draws the prospect’s attention in this email subject line example: “That’s expensive.” Even though it’s less than the recommended subject line length, it still works because recipients would most likely want to see what’s expensive. This is also a great tip to draw recipients’ attention to cold emails from the initial outreach.
This sales email subject line works because it taps into the basic human desire for discovery and the need to know more.
However, to have a high open rate, you would want to avoid deceiving the receivers or fooling them into opening the email since that may backfire horribly when they mark your email as spam.
4. Drive action through urgency
A practical piece of advice for creating the best subject lines is to create urgency.
This works because it taps into the human fear of missing out on a good deal. Subject lines that create urgency are great for sales, events, and promotional emails. In this subject line example, including “last chance” is a wake-up call for recipients who may have seen the previous emails but haven’t taken action because they know the offer is for a limited time.
However, these events or sales must be realistic and not made up. Making up sales and events to increase your open rate can lead to recipients sending your email to the spam folder.
5. Don’t overdo your punctuation
According to research from Mailchimp, using no more than three punctuation marks in your subject line is recommended.
Your email may appear spammy with too many punctuation marks. In this sales email subject line example, Spotify uses one emoji and just one punctuation.
6. Don’t trigger the spam filters
Apart from grabbing attention and increasing the email open rate, the best email subject line also sets expectations for the email content and answers the prospect’s pain points.
This uniformity leads to a higher conversion rate and open rates in subsequent campaigns. However, inconsistency between subject lines and email body can lead to email recipients marking your email as spam.
Some words and phrases can also set off spam filters. Avoid using these trigger words and phrases when crafting subject lines to ensure deliverability.
Read also: 71 Irresistible Webinar Email Subject Lines to Drive Engagement
Key Elements of Successful Sale Email Subject Lines
Now that we have looked at some examples of email subject lines, let’s look at the key elements of successful sale email subject lines.
Personalization
The temptation to view customers as just numbers instead of individuals is particularly rife when crafting subject lines for sales. Yet, research has shown that personalizing email subject lines increases email open rate by more than 25%.
Mailmodo says personalized subject lines increase email open rates by almost 30%.
Personalizing subject lines goes beyond using the name of the email recipient; it also includes showing an understanding of individual preferences and pain points based on past brand interactions.
Typically, personalized email subject lines include information about a customer, most commonly the customer’s name.
Still, it can also include information about their location, occupation, other personal details, interaction with your brand, or products purchased or added to the cart.
Power words
Use power words in your subject lines for sales to stimulate your recipient’s emotional or psychological response.
When used correctly, power words can trigger intense desire, curiosity, anger, trust, fear of missing out, etc. The ultimate aim of power words is to influence email recipients to open the email, click the CTA, and complete the sales process.
While powerful words can be handy for increasing email open rate, using them to create good email subject lines requires some tact. Here are a few tips to remember when using power words to create catchy subject lines.
- Understand your audience: When creating subject lines for sales, know who your prospective customer is, their education level, gender, pain point, etc. A good place to start would be creating an audience persona.
- Define your purpose and goal: When writing good subject lines, you must understand your goals for setting up the campaign. This helps you develop the best value proposition and offer for your sales emails.
- Be consistent: Power words for your email subject line must be consistent with your brand tone and identity.
- Response: Consider what emotional response you want from the email recipient. Once you understand what emotions you want your target audience to feel, you can craft power words that evoke these emotions.
Example of power words you can use in your email subject lines
- Power words for FOMO: Bargain, before, best, big, billion, bonanza, bonus, cash, cheap, deadline, discount, don’t miss out, double, economical, exclusive, expires.
- Power words for curiosity: Astonishing, backdoor, banned, be the first, become an insider, behind the scenes, bizarre, black market, blacklisted, bootleg, censored, class full, classified, closet.
- Power words for increasing desire: Exclusive, irresistible, sensational, luxe/luxurious, captivating, indulge, exquisite, unforgettable, breathtaking, allure, enchanting, pamper, epic, crave, tempting.
- Power words for trust: Reliable, proven, authentic, credible, transparent, verified, dependable, ethical, honest, accredited, integrity, secure, genuine, reputable, trustworthy.
- Power words for fear: Caution, beware, threat, risk, menace, terrifying, panic, dangerous, vulnerable, dread, warning, hazard, nightmare, intimidating.
Subject line length
There has been a notable surge in global mobile phone users in the past decade.
A recent research by Return Path revealed that over half of all emails are now accessed through mobile devices. This trend holds significant implications for email marketers, given that most mobile email apps only showcase the initial 35 characters of an email subject line before cutting it off.
Consequently, this limitation might account for the higher open rates associated with concise subject lines.
Special offers
Including special offers in your email subject line is a great way to re-engage prospects who have shown interest in your brand.
Special offers work because they exploit the fear of missing out on a good deal. Therefore, when using special offers in your sales email subject lines, understand your target audience’s interaction with your brand to give them a personalized offer that will spur them to take action.
The key to successful sales email subject lines is a combination of an irresistible offer and personalized communication.
Writing subject lines that draw on a client’s history and interactions with the brand gives your customers the feeling that you care for them as an individual.
Whether referencing past purchases, highlighting exclusive loyalty rewards, or creating urgency based on specific behaviors, this personalized approach not only entices recipients but also reinforces a brand-customer relationship that goes beyond transactions, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
Read also: 37 Reminder Email Subject Lines That Get Results
Strategies for Creating Audience-Centric Sales Subject Lines
According to research, 78% of people have admitted to backing out of a purchase due to poor customer experience. Additionally, more than 70% of customers consider the customer experience a major factor in their decision to purchase, and almost 90% pay more for a product if their needs are met.
This poses a unique problem for marketers as they must implement strategies to meet individual customer’s needs.
This section discusses strategies for crafting engaging subject lines that resonate with various customer segments. Let’s dive into it.
Segmentation
Segmentation means aggregating your customers (email recipients) into groups or segments based on common characteristics such as demographics, location, prospect’s company position, behavior, or psychotropic factors so that you can better understand them and meet their needs.
Email segmentation aims to pinpoint specific customer groups so that email campaigns and product offerings can be tailored to appeal to them.
Market segmentation assists businesses in reducing risk by identifying the items most likely to capture a customer segment and then drawing up strategies to promote and distribute those products.
Segmentation is the first step when crafting an audience-centric subject line for your email marketing campaign. Your email recipients are more likely to open emails with subject lines that meet a need they have at the moment, or that fit their personality.
Aside from segmenting your customers based on their personality, demography, or location, consider segmenting them based on their interaction with your brand and brand message interaction.
For example, an eCommerce store can segment customers based on their website actions. Customers who added an item to the cart but didn’t make a purchase can be grouped together and offered a special offer they cannot resist. This will not only improve the open rate but also increase conversion.
Personalization
According to a study by SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers engage only with personalized messaging.
You must understand your target audience to personalize your email subject lines. This goes beyond creating an audience persona and analyzing the data you have collected on your customers.
With the data collected, you can segment your target audience into different segments and craft a subject line and email body that resonates with the segment.
Personalization was also found to impact both engagement and conversions significantly. Consider all the revenue you could have generated if you paid more attention to treating your customers individually.
Even though adding names to your subject line is a powerful strategy, personalization goes beyond that. At the height of it, personalization aims to offer your customers what they need when they need it.
Consider this: a telltale sign of two close friends is that they are acquainted with each other’s personality, moods, and preferences. Because of this, they are more likely to give gifts themselves more thoughtfully than strangers would.
In the same way, your business, through interaction with your customers, must learn about your customers’ preferences at a given moment and craft subject lines to reflect the same.
When crafting a subject line, you must consider the location, the purchase history and preferences, and your customer’s interaction with your brand marketing material.
For example, if you own an eCommerce store that deals in clothes, your customer’s location determines what kind of clothes and special offers your emails must include.
Customers in temperate regions are more likely to purchase winter clothes with extra insulation during winter. They will be looking to get special offers on these clothing items. If you send such emails to customers in tropical regions, they are less likely to open them.
Read also: 149 Captivating Holiday Email Subject Lines That Work
Tailoring Subject Lines to Your Brand’s Voice
Maintaining a consistent brand voice across different marketing channels makes your brand appear consistent. This makes recognizing your brand easier, builds customer trust, and secures a potential partnership, especially for B2B brands.
In this section, we will guide you in aligning subject lines with the brand’s tone and the nature of the sale.
Understand brand tone
Determine the tone of your brand, whether it is informal, formal, lighthearted, or professional. Ensure the subject lines speak to this tone to keep the brand identity consistent.
Adapt to the nature of the sale
The language used in the subject line should be influenced by the type of sale, such as a clearance event, product launch, or holiday promotion. Adjust the tone of the subject line to reflect the urgency or excitement of the sales event.
Incorporate brand keywords or taglines
When writing the subject line, use important brand keywords and taglines to foster brand recognition. This reinforces brand recall and strengthens the association between the subject line and the brand’s messaging.
Use humor or creativity appropriately
Funny email subject lines, if done well, increase the chances of sales conversion. So, if humor is part of your brand’s identity, use subject lines with a touch of humor or creativity. However, be mindful of the sales context to ensure appropriateness.
Highlight brand values
If your brand has specific values or a mission, ensure your subject lines reflect them. This builds a deeper connection with customers who resonate with the brand’s values.
Maintain clarity and consistency
Prioritize clarity in subject lines regardless of the tone or nature of the sale. With just a few words, entice recipients to open your emails. Additionally, customers should easily understand you.
Read also: Introduction Email Subject Lines to Captivate Your Audience
Best Practices to Create the Best Sales Email Subject Lines
Follow these best practices to write subject lines that draw the reader’s attention.
Keep it brief
Your subject line should be as brief as possible while providing enough details to convey the meaning of your email. Although it’s not always possible, knowing which email clients your subscribers use can be useful.
It’s important to note that mobile apps, such as Gmail, typically remove content after 35-40 characters until the user pulls the notice down to view more information.
Divide your audience into segments
Avoid sending your entire list with the same generic subject line. Rather, divide your email list based on distinct groups’ demographics or behaviors, then create engaging subject lines for each segment.
Get personal
Consumers anticipate tailored content. The finest subject lines for open rates don’t just include each subscriber’s name; they also use unique data you’ve gathered about their interests or regions.
Remember to use only “zero-party data,” which is information that your subscribers have voluntarily and directly provided to you.
Be succinct and precise
Give your email an idea of what’s in the email’s body while adhering to the ideal length. Beyond the subject lines for sales, ensure you use appealing email templates and follow up with a clear CTA. inside the email in the subject line so they know immediately.
Employ language that motivates action
Clearly state your proposition at the outset. What action do you want your audience to take? What action do you desire from them?
Consume, buy, give, wear, unwind, or listen? Make use of verbs that enable readers to picture themselves acting. But be careful not to use spammy terms.
Emails should be sent on time
Campaign Monitor reviewed over 100 billion emails sent across their platforms to obtain the most comprehensive benchmark data and email marketing metrics.
In the end, they discovered that Mondays typically yield the best results. Additionally, the lowest level of participation was on the weekends.
A/B test your email subject lines
A/B testing allows you to test different variations of subject lines for each segment of your email list.
To do an A/B test on a segment of your email list, take a sample size, share it into two halves, and test the two variations of subject lines. After a preset period, consider the data to see which performed better based on your KPI (open rates, conversions, etc).
Read also: eCommerce Email Marketing Simplified — 15 Examples + Tips
Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Writing Email Subject Lines
Here are the top mistakes to avoid when crafting the best subject lines for sales.
Misleading statements
Avoid using subject lines that promise something misleading or sensationalized. This can erode trust and lead to recipients reporting you as spam.
Overuse of caps lock or exclamation marks
Excessive use of capital letters or exclamation marks can trigger the spam filter. Use them sparingly to maintain professionalism.
Generic or vague phrases
Subject lines that are too generic or vague may fail to grab attention. Be specific and provide enough information to convey the value or content of the email.
Spam trigger words
Avoid using words that commonly trigger spam filters. These include terms like “free,” “earn money fast,” or “urgent.” Using such words can result in your email being marked as spam.
Too long or too short
Excessively long Subject lines may get cut off on some devices, while extremely short ones might need to provide more information. Aim for a balance, typically between 35-40 characters.
Unnecessary punctuation
Excessive use of punctuation marks, such as ellipses (…) or multiple question/exclamation marks, can make your subject line appear unprofessional. Use punctuation sparingly. We subject keeping punctuation to the end of the subject line alone.
Repetitive messaging
Avoid sending emails with subject lines that are too similar to previous campaigns. Repetitive messaging can lead to recipients ignoring or unsubscribing from your emails.
Read also: Should You Use Emojis in Email Subject Lines?
Integrating Sale Email Campaigns with Overall Marketing Efforts
One way to integrate sales email campaigns with overall marketing efforts is through marketing automation. It is like a funnel from the first time web visitors interact with your brand to when they make their first purchase.
The number of customers reduces as they go from one stage to another.
The role of a marketing and sales team is to try to improve the efficiency of this funnel, to make sure that more quality leads, that is, people who are most likely to buy your product, move from one stage to the other to the next until they make a purchase.
With marketing automation, you make the process more efficient and less time-consuming.
Here are a few ways marketing automation makes integrating sales email campaigns with overall marketing efforts possible.
- Centralized customer database: Using automation software like EngageBay helps you maintain a centralized customer database, ensuring that all pertinent customer information, including interactions and preferences, is stored cohesively.
- Automated drip campaigns: Create automated drip campaigns to nurture leads through various sales funnel stages. This drip campaign is triggered based on user actions or predefined time intervals.
- Lead nurturing workflows: Develop lead nurturing workflows encompassing marketing and sales touchpoints and define the actions and responses at each stage to ensure a seamless transition between marketing-generated leads and sales interactions.
- Integration with Sales CRM: Use EngageBay CRM to synchronize data seamlessly between marketing and sales teams. This ensures both teams have real-time access to customer information and interactions.
It’s also recommended to send emails between 2 and 5 times a month. Sending more than ten emails a month could annoy the customer and send you to the spam folder. We have found that 6-7 emails per month are a sweet spot, particularly for customers with a high open rate.
Read also: 55 Exemplary Newsletter Subject Lines to Boost Email Open Rates
Conclusion
Email subject lines can determine how well your email marketing campaign performs. As such, crafting your sales email subject lines according to best practices is important. One of the most important practices in crafting an email subject line is personalization.
Personalizing subject lines leads to an increased open rate and increases the chances of customers taking action. Aside from personalization, subject lines can benefit from using powerful words, clear and concise messages, and timely messages.
EngageBay’s CRM and email marketing automation platform gives you a 360-degree view of each lead and customer.
This data is important for segmenting your email lists and creating subject lines that resonate with each customer segment. Its A/B testing feature also lets you optimize your sales email subject lines and send the best variation for better results.
Sign up now to get started, or book a demo to get in touch with one of our experts.
