The Subject Line Trap

One question that anyone who uses email for marketing will end up asking is how to craft better subject lines.

It’s a logical question: the subject line is the second-most important part of any email (after, of course, who sent it).

And, there’s a very straightforward relationship between it and your goal: people can’t convert if they don’t click through, and they can’t click through if they don’t open.

However, at least within the context of newsletters, as long as your subject lines accurately describe the content of your emails, they’re great - just like your content is already great.

The issue is that subject lines are approached with a scarcity mindset - your email is being sent to a specific number of people, and to have the biggest impact, you need to maximize your open rate.

But you don’t actually need a better subject line - it’s just a mechanism.

What you want is more certainty, which can’t be created.

Because you can’t control which subscribers any given subject line will resonate with, or if they’ll open any specific newsletter.

No matter what subject line you write, your audience will open your newsletters because you’ve sent them - not because you got their attention with something they couldn’t resist clicking on, but because you’re a credible authority who has built a strong relationship with them.

If one email doesn’t perform as well as another, that’s just part of the game - and that’s completely putting aside that some email service providers won’t share performance data at all.

Instead of agonizing over writing an imaginarily perfect subject line, have confidence in yourself, and have faith in both your subscribers and the process.

Because optimizing for attention means creating something that’s not really yours - and that’s not what your audience signed up for.