If your cold email subject lines don’t hook your prospects, they won’t read your emails. No emails read → No replies → No meetings booked → No growth opportunities.
So, how to write subject lines that boost conversion rates?
We analyzed the subject lines from 400M+ cold outreach campaigns to find out what works, and what doesn’t.
Here are 3 proven tips that will get your emails opened 🚀
Tip #1: Keep your subject line short & sweet
Your email subject line should be between 1-8 words (even 1-word subject lines can be successful).
It needs to grab attention and communicate value without taking up a lot of space. Readers should click on it after 1 look.
In fact, we found that open and reply rates decrease on average with every extra word you add to a subject line:
Your subject line should also be short enough to appear in full on mobile.
A subject line that looks like this on the recipient's desktop:
…will be cut short on a phone screen:
To help you write short subject lines that get your emails opened, you can steal our 100+ subject line templates and boost your reply rates!
Tip #2: Ask a question only if it’s relevant
You might have heard that asking a question is the best way to engage with a prospect. The strategy is to provoke a response and make leads open the email.
So, are questions a proven way to get people to open an email?
According to the data, not necessarily.
Adding a question to your cold email subject won’t guarantee success. And if you try to over-optimize by adding multiple question marks, this will hurt your open rate!
Here's how to add questions in your subject lines:
→ Be specific - ask a question that addresses the prospect’s specific pain point, e.g., “Need help with {painPoint}?"
→ Challenge their expectations - provoke a response by surprising them, e.g., “Happy with 50% open rates?”
Tip #3: Add urgency
Your prospect should have a sense that they need to act on your message now instead of letting it get lost in minutes. The action they’re taking should be clear and easy to follow.
Using all caps, too many emojis, or exclamation points doesn’t lead to higher open rates. Also, using too many of them can get you marked as spam!
Here's how to add urgency and emotion without being spammy:
→ Make an exclusive offer,
e.g., “an exclusive gift for you, {firstName}"
→ Add fear of missing out,
e.g., “Invite to the event of the year, {firstName}"
P.S. To get a full list of proven subject line tips & 10 data-based cold email subject lines, check out this article 👇
You have a list of prospect companies but aren’t sure what’s the actual person to target with your outreach?
You can use ChatGPT to generate it for you! 💪
Here’s a prompt that will get you buyer personas so you can boost outreach personalization and get more replies:
"You're a senior consultant with 20+ years of experience.
You're a master at creating the most unique and unusual growth strategies. You've helped the fastest-growing companies in the world skyrocket their growth and customer acquisition.
Your tone of voice should be actionable, no-fluff, approachable, casual, and storyteller.
Generate 5 detailed buyer personas for an individual who would be interested in [DESCRIPTION OF YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE].
The buyer personas should include the following information:
1. Name: (insert the name of the persona)
2. Position: (insert position or role of the persona)
3. Professional background: (describe the professional background, experience, or expertise of the persona)
4. Goals and objectives: (specify the goals and objectives that the persona wants to achieve in their professional life)
5. How they heard about [YOUR COMPANY NAME]: (indicate the channels or sources through which the persona became aware of your company)
6. Path to purchase: (describe the typical journey or steps the persona takes when considering and making a purchase related to your product or service)
7. Potential barriers: (identify the factors or concerns that might hold the persona back from buying your product or service)
Remember to provide sufficient detail and context to ensure the generated personas are accurate and useful. Please present the buyer personas in the form of a table."
We ran this prompt for lemlist and got 5 detailed buyer personas. Here’s an example of one of them:
Once you have this information, you can use it to personalize your cold outreach to get more replies and build more meaningful relationships!
To get the full step-by-step guide on how to define your target audience from scratch with the help of AI, check out this article 👇
Whether you’re reaching out to users for feedback or to prospects for meetings, the right booking tool makes scheduling meetings effortless.
So, which tool to use to schedule meetings in 1 message and avoid losing leads to the scheduling back-and-forth?
With lemcal, you can cut friction and get 2x more meetings booked 🙌
lemcal will help you:
→ catch leads attention thanks to a personalized booking page
→ save hours of manual work with automated scheduling links
→ boost your sales efficiency thanks to lemlist integration
Using another tool? It takes < 1 min. to switch your current schedules.
You can get your lemcal access now and start booking more meetings. For free! 🔥
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Take care,
G and the team
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