Copywriting Exercise & Critique: How To Write Better Subject Lines

What makes a stellar subject line? Come along with me as I take you through one of my favorite copywriting exercises of all time. I am about to share my unfiltered critiques of six subject lines. What made them great, what left me wanting more, and what would make them even more powerful. Keep watching. Hey posse, what's up? It's Alex. Last week I posted a video about five simple copywriting exerc that you can do every single day to help you master the art of copywriting. One of those exercises was to find headlines online and then use your mad copywriter ninja skills to make them even better. So for this tutorial, I'm going to go a little bit deeper into that one exercise by showing you my critiques of six subject lines from six different people, all for the same email. So let's get started. Now if you are following me on Instagram Copyposse, then you've probably seen my regular make it Hotter posts where I find an ad, a headline or a subject line and then I put it out to the community. You guys the Posse to yes, you guessed it, make it hotter. So my community absolutely loves this series. I love reading your comments. Not only is it a great way to practice, but it's a great way to see how other copywriters think. And it really helps you better understand why certain things work and why certain things just don't. And the best part of this exercise for me is when I get to put on my Posse prop so spectacles and critique the top voted submissions. So in today's video, I'm going to take you through one of my latest editions of make it Hotter on subject lines and break down my critiques point by point. By the way, if you want to see more in depth critiques like this one, then give me a thumbs up below and of course hit that subscribe button below and tap that bell to be notified when my next video goes live. All right, now first let's take a look at this post where I asked the posse to make this subject line even hotter. So this was an email from founder and the subject line was why 2021 is the perfect storm for e commerce. And the meta or the preview text was here's my prediction. 2021 is about to be the biggest year online store owners have ever seen. Well, with over 200 submissions, the posse really showed up for this one. But before I get to my personal critiques of those top submissions, let's first critique Founders original copy. What worked, what was lacking, and what could be better. Now the first thing I noticed is that both the subject line and the meta are a little bit long. With more and more use viewing emails on mobile devices, the amount of visible real estate for subject lines really needs to be considered. Of course, it varies from device to device how many characters are shown in the subject line, but the rule of thumb that I like to stick to is around 30 characters and then 50 characters or less for the preview text. This ensures your copy is being seen in its entirety for the majority of devices and users. Remember, when it comes to the inbox, less is often more. Now, if you're wondering Alex, what the heck is a meta or preview text, here it is. It's that little email preview that you see with certain email providers like Gmail and Outlook. It's essentially a little teaser that gives you more info about what the email is about and is another opportunity for you to pique curiosity and entice the reader to click, because you can customize it so you can see some preview text here. Make 2021 your best year ever in this email from AdWorld. Now, albeit short, the subject line and preview text are two of the most important parts of your email, right? Because this is what determines whether people will actually open your email, mark you as spam, or send you straight into the trash. So to craft hot subject lines, you want to either create urgency, evoke curiosity, be controversial, get personal, or simply tell them what's inside. So Founder did a really good job at evoking curiosity here with why 2021 is the perfect storm for e Commerce. But they might want to strengthen the subject line by eliminating a few unnecessary words and maybe adding personalization, right? The meta description is also a bit long and here's my prediction. 2021 is about to be the biggest year online store owners have ever seen. It's long, right? So with that, let's take a look at the Posse subject line submissions along with my critiques. These six subject lines were selected because they received the most amounts of likes or votes from the community. And first up we have my girl Leigh Ann. She is a grad of Launchpad Season 1 and she's also a rainmaker, a member of my high level coaching program. So we already know she killed it. But let's pull up her subject line and take a look at my note. All right, so you can see Leanne's subject line is Name Cy. E commerce is dominating this year and the preview text is it's not too late to join. So first of all, I absolutely love the personalization. We know that personalization improves email open rates, even though everybody knows that that merge field is all just like tech wizardry that happens behind the scenes, right? Personalization works. So awesome idea by Leanne for this subject line. I also love her open loop with Cy. Right. It's hinting that there is a reason and if you open the email, you will find out. Right? Excellent. Excellent. Open loop now. I love that she said this year is dominating this year as opposed to 2021, because it's a great way to make this email 100% evergreen. Right? If they wanted to send this automated as an autoresponder, they could use an email that says this year as opposed to the year because, hey, 2021 is almost over right now. I love the way she also formatted this subject line. I can tell that she's been through my email marketing training. I love that she made it very, very clear for me as the reader to see or the copywriter or the business owner or whoever will be looking at this, right? And to see that this is the subject line up at the top. And then of course, the preview text is down below. And lastly, her preview text is nice and short and sweet. She said it's not too late to join. Really nice urgency at play, right? It's not scarcity because she's not saying join now before it's too late, but she's saying it's not too late to join. And using those words too late is a really, really powerful way to evoke that urgency and get more clicks. So. So overall, five stars. You did awesome, Leigh Ann. Great job. All right, so now we have five more submissions to go through. So let's pull up the next one here by Julie Booley. Julie Boley, 17. So her subject line is 10 years of E commerce growth in just 90 days, question mark, exclamation mark. The 2021 boom is on fire with three fire emojis. So overall, I love her hook. It's a really good sort of FYI hook. She's basically telling you, hey, there has been 10 years worth of growth in just 90 days. That's interesting. I want to know more. Right. Great hook. Overall, it's a bit long and it could be that she was intending to have the subject line be the first sentence and then the preview text is the second. But because she didn't specify that, I wasn't sure. So she could have improved this a bit by just saying, hey, this is the subject and this is the preview. Now, great specificity as well. So specificity in terms of Using numbers is a great way to create an open loop because it catches the attention of your eye in the inbox. Right? If you're seeing words, words, words, words, words, and then you see numbers, it really does pull your eye in and then people want to know more, right? So overall, her use of numbers, great use of specificity. Love a good emoji. I mean, you guys know my thoughts on emojis. I think they're fun. Again, they catch your attention in the inbox when you see that bright yellowy orange emoji. Right? You don't want to overdo it. You don't want every single email you send to be like jam packed with emojis. But when used tastefully, they can really power up your subject lines and preview text. The other thing I might suggest is because the first line is quite long for a subject line. Maybe just flopping the two. Right? So maybe making the subject line, you know, the 2021 boom is on fire. And then make the preview text, 10 years of e commerce growth in 90 days. I cross out the word just just because it's probably not necessary and might make your. Your subject line or preview text just that much longer that it could be cut off on mobile devices. Right? Great job. Julie Booley. 17. All right, moving on to the next one. I love this, you guys. I freaking love this. Okay, so Han, Panna. I'm sorry, I don't know your actual names. I'm going to say. I'm just going to guess that maybe your name is Han. It's hard to tell which is Instagram handles, so I apologize. Hannah says Y e Commerce in 2021 is going to explode to apocalyptic levels. First of all, that word apocalyptic, I love it piques my curiosity. Excellent, excellent. What? The world is ending. The E commerce world is ending. What's happening? Right. Also, love the open loop that's created with the word Y. Right. Going back to Leanne's example of Cy, she could have done that here as well. But why works in this context. Great way to open a loop and get people thinking, I don't know why. I must find out. I'm going to click. Right. I like that she uses the word E commerce. It makes it really relevant to the target audience. Of course, if you remove that word, it would be weird. Why 2021 is going to explode. Not the vibe you want. So really, really relevant keyword in the subject line there. Overall, a tiny bit long. Right? Again, this is the hardest thing, you guys. Writing short, punchy subject lines in preview text and headlines. For that matter is probably one of the hardest things to do in copywriting. It's not easy. So sometimes you got to write it and then rewrite it. And so that's what I did here. Just as a possibility. I don't know if it would be better. Of course, this is just a guess, but you can see here, I thought subject line could be 2021 e commerce apocalypse, question mark. Right. And then the preview would be why online sales are about to explode. So I kind of like tied in a bit of a benefit in that preview text as well, which again, you can take or leave, but it could be a way to shorten it and still make it punchy using your core ideas. So excellent, excellent job. Okay, now moving on to the next one. We have Elizabeth here and her subject line is three reasons why you should start your E com business in 2021. Spoiler. It's going to be epic with a emoji. So first of all, love the specificity. Again, great way to open a loop is by providing numbers and a framework. Three reasons, not one, three. Oh my God, I must know what are the three reasons? Which is great. It's a bit long, right? So I might ask, like, how can you shorten this? And my idea was maybe three reasons. This is the biz you need in 2021. Obviously it does change the nature of the E commerce specificity a little bit, but you know, you could bring that into the preview text or keep it a little bit more broad, pique curiosity and explain it more in the email itself. Right. I'm also again assuming that the second part of this sentence is the preview text, but because you didn't specify Elizabeth, I'm not sure. So I'm just going to guess. I love the word spoiler. Spoiler alert. It's fun. So spoiler. It's going to be epic. Again, love the open loop. So one way that you could tweak that is you could make the subject line like three reasons. This is the biz you need in 2021. And then it could say, spoiler, E Com is going to be epic or something like that. So you're still bringing in the specificity that you're referring specifically to E commerce based businesses. Right. Okay, moving on to the next one. We have a subject line here from Riddy Panchal, underscore marketing. The subject line here is 2021 will be record breaking year for your e commerce store. Little grammar thing there. It should say will be a record breaking year, but overall record breaking. Love that idea. Love the concept. Love the hook, overall. I also love that you're speaking to the reader. You're saying the word your, right, your store, your store as an E commerce business owner, really, really powerful. But overall, it's very long. So I would ask you to workshop it a bit and figure out how can you shorten it and better utilize the preview text because you have how read inside as the preview text, which is a little bit redundant, right? As a subject line and preview text, your only goal is to get them to open the email. So by piquing their curiosity to get them to click, you don't have to say how read inside. So, so you could say something like 2021 will break all the records. Find out what this means for your e commerce store or something like that, right? So you're still using that hook, you're still calling out the audience, but you're better utilizing that real estate. All right, overall, awesome, awesome job. All right, now, last one. We have a subject line here from Brittany and it reads how a pandemic equals massive win for E commerce with like a little huh, surprise emoji. Right? Very, very strong here. I love the irony hook at play to how, like how to play off the fact that this pandemic will be a massive win. People go, wait, what? How is that possible? Right? So really great irony hook at play. Also love the use of symbols and emojis for grabbing attention. Remember, if you only have 30 characters to grab attention, how can you use symbols, an equal sign, a plus sign, an ampersand to shorten subject lines so that they fit on mobile, right? So overall, really great job there. Very, very strong. I say here, which I just shared with you obviously earlier in this video, that mobile devices show 25 to 30 characters, so be a bit careful there. This one's 47, so ask yourself, how can you make it shorter? I think one way to really do it is just to remove how a and just have the subject line be Pandemic equals massive win for E commerce question mark, right? Also, there's no preview text, so I mean, with that strong of a subject line, would love to see some optimized preview text added there. Everyone did such a great job on this exercise. Really, you guys absolutely killed it. So if you want to play along with the next edition of Make It Hotter, go ahead and follow me on Instagram Copyposse. And if you guys like this video and you like to see me do more in depth critiques like this, make sure to let me know in the comments below. I always love to hear from you. And if you want to grab a copy of my free Ultimate Email Marketing Cheat Sheet to help you master the ABCs of inbox influence, you can grab that as a free gift at the end of this video in just a few seconds. Thanks for watching. Until next time, I'm Alex. Ciao for now. Alright guys, if you enjoyed that video, make sure to check out the next one from me right here. And you can click right here to get a free gift. One of the biggest mistakes a copywriter can make is using the exact same same hook and headline for every single audience. Think about it. The way you capture the attention of a random scroller by on Facebook is very different from how you'd capture the attention of your most loyal subscribers. So today I'm talking about how to write headlines the right way based on the five levels of customer awareness.