How important is your email "subject line?

Add personalization

Use merge tags to personalize your subject lines with each recipient's name or location. Personalization is shown to increase open rates for most users, and may work well when combined with targeted automations such as birthday deals and post-purchase follow-ups.

Be descriptive

Sometimes, it's better to be direct and descriptive than trendy. Seasonal slogans such as "Fall into savings" or "Sizzling summer bargains" are popular but don't offer a specific hook. Instead, try to communicate the benefits of your promotions, or call attention to specific deals.

Keep it short

For many recipients, especially those reading your emails on mobile devices, shorter is often better. We recommend you use no more than 9 words and 60 characters.

Limit punctuation

Our research shows that it’s best to use no more than 3 punctuation marks per subject line. Too many punctuation marks can make your email look like spam, especially if you use a lot of special characters.

Use emojis carefully

Test subject lines

There are a few ways to learn whether your subject line is a likely winner: Check out the tips in our built-in subject line helper, view your recent subject line performance, or use an A/B or Multivariate testing campaign to see if different subject lines affect your open rates.

Subject line helper

Our subject line helper checks to see whether your subject line follows our tips around best practices, which are based on the open rate performance of hundreds of millions of emails in Mailchimp.

A/B and Multivariate testing

A/B and Multivariate tests reveal how small differences impact performance. Unlike the subject line helper, which uses data from emails sent by all Mailchimp users, A/B and Multivariate tests can tell you what your specific contacts like best.

Create multiple versions of your email that are identical in every way but the subject line, and we'll send them to randomly selected parts of your subscribed audience. We'll automatically send the email with the best open rate to the remainder of your subscribed audience, and you'll learn a little about what kind of subject line appeals to your contacts.

The more you test your subject lines, the more you'll come to know your contacts and their preferences.