How to Write Effective Email Subject Lines

Key Takeaways

hi i'm rebecca from invid in this lesson you'll learn how to write effective subject lines so people actually open the emails you send them because that is what you want right why do we send email usually we send email because we want someone to know something or we want someone to do something and they can only do that and get the information you send if they open it so this lesson will show you how to write the subject lines that help your emails get opened now of course when you write to your family or friends they're going to open your email because they love you they like you and they want to hear from you but what happens in more business-like situations or more formal situations there you have a lot of competition if your email inbox is like most people's today you're probably getting i don't know 60 to 100 emails a day now if you're a manager they're getting about 300 to 200 to 300 emails a day and high level executives are getting 500 to 700 emails a day so if you're trying to get through if you're trying to get a job if you're trying to make an application or a proposal and you want your email to be open you need to get attention you need to grab their attention when there's so much competition in that inbox right so in this lesson i'm going to show you an easy way to set up your subject line so that it can get the attention that you want all right now before we go any further let me just make sure that you know what i mean by a subject line so when we write an email there are three parts to it right there's the two so what are you going to put there you're going to put the name of the person or the email address of the person that you're sending the email to that's the recipient then there's the subject line the little short summary of what you're gonna write about that's called the subject lines it tells the person what you're writing about or why you're writing okay and last is your actual message all right so there are three parts so in this lesson we're focusing just on this because this is the only thing that is seen on mobile devices or also in your inbox right and based on that you decide whether you should open it or not all right now if you weren't sure what to write or if you're thinking very casually or you just really didn't understand that it was so important to write an effective subject line you might have written or seen subject lines like this which are actually pretty useless in the business situations or business context okay for example hi or hello good morning how are you that doesn't tell us anything right doesn't say anything about why you're writing or re with nothing written after it re is actually short for regarding and you're supposed to put something there if you don't put anything there then it doesn't say anything ref is short for referring to or reference something again if you have nothing there doesn't mean anything some people write dear fred well if you're writing to fred jones then fred knows that you're writing to him you don't need to repeat that in the subject line doesn't tell him anything or you say from mary but if you're writing and your name is mary your name is already there you don't need to repeat that either or some people just don't know what to write so they don't write anything so automatically it just says no subject and that's not going to help you at all what will happen if you write email like this in a business context it's very likely that your email will either be deleted or ignored most often or just lost in that sea of emails that keep coming in to our inboxes and flooding our inboxes every day and also most important it will stay unopened and unread and whatever you wanted to communicate didn't happen so now i'm going to show you what to do to make sure or to increase your chances of your email messages being opened so here's a simple system you can follow to write more effective subject lines i like to call it the cis principle okay why cis because it's should be short informative and specific s i s now that doesn't mean you write three subject lines but you think through it this way in order to come up with the last one let's go through some examples so you understand okay so first short what's the key message what's the key word here what's it all about it's a meeting let's say okay then make it informative give them some more information about the meeting which meeting where what june 7th meeting okay now you've made it informative all right next make it specific what about that meeting why are you writing about the june 7 meeting tell them cancelled then put a colon june 7th meeting now even if somebody's really in a hurry you will have conveyed a very important message to them in your very effective subject line okay because you said so much you see how this is so much better than where we started but even this is so much better than just saying hi or good morning or dear john all right so let's look at some more examples like that okay and try to think this way so that we come up with the best one here short informative specific so let's say you ordered something from amazon but when it got to you you ordered a glass bowl and when it got to you it was broken all right so you have to write to ask for a refund so short what's it about your order uh informative amazon order number 625 okay you're giving a little more detail there and now specific what about it what about that order refund amazon order 625 now when amazon receives that they're going to know which department to send it to for the refund okay and it's also more effective because they can find your email more easily because you've said why you've written you've given the order number and it's much more much easier for them to reference it and to find it and to search for it if necessary all right let's look at this situation this is a let's say in a university you want to meet your professor okay because you want to discuss something to do with your thesis so you could start off with the basic short message appointment then informative requesting appointment which means asking for an appointment and then specific requesting appointment to discuss thesis okay now you might have noticed that here i wrote the word appointment okay but here i said a-p-p-t now why is it important to use these abbreviations because when i say short i mean really short today a lot of people are reading their email emails on mobile devices so what happens you have very little space very few words that you can use to convey this information right it's basically on mobile devices about three to five words that's it that shows up or 25 to 30 characters characters mean specific letters plus the spaces okay those are characters and if it's in a regular inbox or on your computer you might see five or seven words or about 50 characters so you really want to keep it short all right so whenever you can use a conventional abbreviation it will help all right let's look at some more examples all right so let's pretend you're applying for a job now in that situation first before you apply this principle you should read very clearly and carefully whatever has been written in the job advertisement and because very often they tell you what to write in the subject line so they can find the people who have applied very easily all right so in that case please make sure to read the entire advertisement and write exactly what they tell you to write in the subject line okay but if they don't tell you then you can follow the cis principle to help you to write an effective subject line so again cis stands for what short informative and specific so let's say you are writing to apply for a job so start with the word job in terms of your thinking then teaching job and then french teaching job number 52 okay all right so again you've been very specific even person looks at it they know exactly all right this is for the french teaching position and which one number 52 okay that's the way to do it all right now let's suppose again another business scenario regarding a conference okay but that's the basic subject conference short get a little more informative which conference the marketing conference and then why are you writing about the marketing conference what do you want to tell somebody or what do you want to ask somebody so then get specific you could say for example confirming attendance colon marketing conference now you see that i abbreviated the word marketing and i abbreviated the word conference because again you want to keep it as short as possible or let's suppose you wanted to ask somebody if they are going to attend it so you could say something like attending marketing conference question mark that's okay too all right that's usually for a colleague or somebody that we know pretty well then you can be a little bit more informal and just ask the question like that okay now here's another scenario where you're sending in your resume for a position that maybe wasn't advertised but you want them to have your resume or your cv so you could start with the idea resume then get a little more information into it receptionist resume that's the position reception receptionist that you're looking for and then receptionist resume colin and john grant now you're asking me but you told me not to put my name because they know my name yes in general it's true don't write your name but when you're sending in your resume i strongly recommend that you do put your name so it can be found so it stands out so people see your name so people remember your name very clearly next to this subject okay so in that particular case do put that next i'm giving you lots of vocabulary that you can use for these kind of subject lines so here are some verbs and some nouns that you can use and that will save you time when you're trying to write that very effective subject line okay here we go cancelled postponed what does postponed mean delayed okay so suppose there was a meeting and now the time has changed from three o'clock to five o'clock or from monday to thursday then you could write postponed and again with any of these verbs you could put a colon right after it and then the information the specific information confirmed booked which means the same as reserved okay shipped which means the same as sent delivered means your package arrived requested means you're asking for something rescheduled means the timing of something changed all right and approved means somebody gave their okay all right here are some nouns that you might find useful when you're writing professional or business email arrival interview introduction very often today in business we're introducing one person that we know to someone else that we know who we think would be helpful for them to get to know each other for business reasons or for some other reason so we introduce them so you can write introduction you can put a colon and you can put the name of the people or the person referral again sometimes you're referring somebody you're recommending somebody for a position or for a job follow-up it's a very good idea after your interview for example to write a short email to say uh thank you and you could say follow up january 20th or something like that okay just a little thank you a little follow-up so they remember you okay and that can score you some good points all right inquiry in case you're asking information about something or proposal okay in case you're making a proposal to a company regarding something all right so those are some vocabulary words that will help you and besides that let's just go over a few more points so that you can really zero in and write the best subject lines possible so sometimes you'll see that people write important or urgent right now of course when it is important or urgent then use it but don't abuse it don't use it all the time because after some time nobody will pay attention if you write important or urgent okay so only use these words when something is really important or urgent all right next do not write in all caps or all capital letters so i wrote know all caps because when you write in all capital letters then it's like you're shouting at that person it's it's too much okay so just don't do that even if it's important or urgent very rarely they will write important in all caps okay but that's the most then next what happens if you are replying to someone okay because you say yeah rebecca sometimes i'm writing a letter but sometimes lots of times i'm replying right sure so what happens then then you just hit reply and whatever subject line that person wrote to you is now going to continue with a re before it so let's say that person wrote proposal okay he didn't watch this lesson so he doesn't know how to write a really good subject line you do but suppose initially he said proposal when you reply it will say re dot dot which is colon proposal and it'll keep going like that every time and it'll say re re after a while what are you going to do sometimes there are 17 messages from that one subject line is that effective anymore not really so what should you do well you can do one of two things if the subject you're talking about is still the same then you can keep that subject line okay so everybody can find the email related to that subject but once the subject starts to change away from proposal and you start talking about the marketing conference or some other subject then change it change the subject line so that later you and that other person can find the email related to the real subject you're now discussing and not to the original subject that you started off discussing okay so that's kind of the rule you can follow all right now when should you write your subject line should you write it before you write the email or should you write it after there are advantages to both usually i recommend that it's helpful for you to write it before because it helps you to focus on the content of your email but after you've finished the email just make sure to go back and check that the subject line is still about what you wrote because sometimes when we start writing we write more than we had planned to write so if there's more then maybe you want to go back and modify or slightly change your subject line to match the content of your email all right and last remember again to keep it short informative and specific all right so that you can get that job get that customer and get that next opportunity and make the most of it okay now uh if you really want to master this process of writing effective subject lines go to our website at www.invid.com there you'll find a quiz on this subject of course you'll also find about a thousand other lessons on all kinds of subjects that have to do with english so you can look around there as well and subscribe to my youtube channel for lots of other useful messages and lessons in english that will help you to learn english faster and more effectively okay thanks very much for watching i know you care and i know you're going to make a big difference in your english bye for now