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Audience Development Strategy

Write Effective “How-To” Email Subject Lines to Increase Open Rates

One part BENEFIT and one part HOW-TO equals an intriguing and persuasive email subject line

One part BENEFIT and one part HOW-TO equals an intriguing and persuasive email subject line

The average Internet user is bombarded with dozens if not hundreds of email subject lines every day. Most of us have developed an anti-headline defense and tune out when we sense an email subject line is trying to sell us something.

Is your email subject line sufficiently intriguing to prompt the recipient to open your email newsletter or sales letter? Or do you “give away” the entire message in the email subject line, diminishing the subscriber’s incentive to read any further?

The “how-to” email subject line

The how-to subject line is specific because it promises to reveal “how-to” achieve the benefit.

It is nearly impossible to write a bad how-to email subject line. Simply join a mouth-watering benefit to the words “how to.”

  • How to Write a Hit Song and Sell It.
  • How to Raise Venture Capital without Risk
  • How to Get 12 Hours Out of an 8-hour Day

Omitting the word “to” is also acceptable:

  • How Millionaires Buy and Sell Gold
  • How I Made a Fortune with a Fool Idea
  • How a New Discovery Made a Plain Girl Beautiful

Supporting your brand is Job #1. All other considerations, including the cleverness of email subject lines, are subordinate to the integrity of your brand.

In other words, the email subject line is not creative if it prompts the recipient to open your email message, but subsequently disappoints, confuses, or worse, alienates the recipient.

Against that background, we’ve created a master list of The 13 Best Email Subject Lines, now available for free to our readers. These thirteen subject line archetypes that have been proven to be effective when used judiciously. Download The 13 Best Email Subject Lines today!

By Amanda MacArthur

Research Director & Managing Editor

Amanda is responsible for all the articles you read on the Mequoda Daily portal and every email newsletter delivered to your inbox from us. She is also our in-house social media expert and would love to chat with you over on @Mequoda. She has worked with Mequoda for almost a decade, helping to evolve the Mequoda Method through research, testing and developing new best practices in digital publishing, editorial strategy, email marketing and audience development. Amanda is a co-author of our four digital publishing handbooks.

Co-authored handbooks:

Contact Amanda:

Contact Amanda via email at amanda (at) mequoda (dot) com, @amaaanda, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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