In this video Alex Cattoni of The Copy Posse shares the findings from hundreds of split‑tests on email subject lines, revealing that some of their best lines achieved open rates of up to 50%. She presents a free report containing the top 50 winning subject lines and 11 actionable insights derived from the tests. The core of the presentation is five practical tactics that marketers can apply immediately to improve open rates: (1) play up your brand voice for authenticity, (2) ask questions to create curiosity‑driven open loops, (3) use numbers to make headlines concrete and list‑friendly, (4) incorporate emojis sparingly to add visual break and emotion, and (5) keep subject lines short (5‑7 words) while leveraging preview text for additional context. Alex emphasizes testing each tip, mixing them across campaigns, and never sacrificing brand integrity for clicks. The video ends with a call to download the free report, subscribe to the channel, and continue testing subject lines for ongoing optimization.
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I tested hundreds of subject lines to see what gets more clicks. And in this video I'm going to share with you five easy ways you can boost your subject line open rate. Plus, my team and I put together a massive report of the top 50 subject lines we tested. We'll share the results along with the 11 key insights that you can apply to your own subject lines immediately to boost open rates and drive more engagement. Some of our best had open rates pushing 50%. So you are definitely going to want to stick around to grab your copy copy of my free report at the end of this video. Keep watching. Hey posse, what's up? It's Alex coming at you this week with another video to help you improve your email marketing results. And this one's a little scientific, so I even put on my spectacles for this one. Whether you are a business owner trying to get better open rates, engagements, clicks and conversions from your emails, or you're a copywriter who is getting paid to do that that for your clients, this channel is where you need to be. So you know what to do. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button below and don't forget to ring that bell to be notified when my next video goes live. Now, subject lines are a topic that I really nerd out on because 47% of people open emails based on the subject line alone. That means that almost half of the people on your list are deciding whether to read your email or not just based on a few words in their inbox. Crazy, right? Your email could be the most perfectly written masterpiece, but if no one is opening it, does it even matter? No. So if you are not seeing the conversions you want with your email marketing, the very first thing you should be focusing on is boosting your subject line open rates. It is such low hanging fruit in your business. I mean, if your open rates are low, right, no one is seeing or reading your emails and then therefore no one is buying. So by simply just increasing the number of people who click on that email in your inbox, you are instantly boosting your overall conversion, your revenue and your profits. Now you might be wondering, okay Alex, but like what is a good open rate? Well, according to Zippy, the average email open rate across all industries is around 21%. Here at the Copy Posse, our open rates range from about 25% on the low end to 50% on the high end, which is pretty good. But like all smart marketers, we are always looking for ways to improve, optimize and outperform ourselves. So since the top of the year, we have been running split tests. We on all. Yes, you heard me. All of our subject lines. We wanna know what does our audience respond to? What kind of subject line really gets their attention? And how do we get more of our open rates at that 50% mark? Right. Well, after analyzing the winners, we recognize that there are five easy ways that you can instantly boost your open rates. And here they are. Number one, Play up your brand voice. Writing subject lines that embody your brand's unique voice is always a good idea. Now, this isn't about sounding cutesy or cle. It is about authenticity. When your subject lines reflect your unique brand voice, you're actually building connection and trust with your audience. In fact, many of our top performing subject lines were a bit sassy or sarcastic or maybe even a little controversial. But keep in mind, this is very on brand for me, which is why these subject lines perform really well. Now, of course, if your brand voice is cutesy or clever, you can of course use subject lines that are cutesy and clever. If your brand voice is clear, playful, use subject lines that are playful. If your brand voice is sarcastic. You see where I'm going with this, right? Use sarcasm. If your brand voice is more formal or serious, please do not use the same subject lines that I use. That should be a given. But whatever you do, do not sacrifice the integrity of your brand voice just for the sake of a few extra clicks. I will never forget the time I used WTF in an email for a client whose brand voice would definitely not curse, even in acronym form, I guess. Well, their audience was not happy about it and I got an earful from the customer support team. So oops. Lesson learned. Just make sure you are sticking to the brand voice and use it wisely. All right, onto number two, Ask questions. Asking questions is a great way to pull your audience's attention forward with an open loop. Ask them a question you know they want the answer to. This could be a rhetorical question or a question related to a pain point that you know they're struggling with. Or just ask them a question that will pique curiosity and make them desperate to want to know the answer. This is a really great way to boost open rates, but like anything, don't overuse it. You don't want every single one being a question. Right on to number three. Use numbers. Using numbers is a really awesome way to get people to pay closer attention. And this concept works the same way when it comes to writing blog posts, headlines, ads, social media captions, even the title of this video. Numbers instantly stand out because they break that visual wall of text. Right. And they also, to the reader, hey, this thing is specific and valuable. Plus, we as humans really love learning in frameworks, lists, and steps. That's one of the reasons why sites like buzzfeed have such compelling headlines. Right? Of course. I need to know the 30 things I should treat my fur baby to. Obviously, this opens a loop and really gets people to click. That's why including numbers and subject lines result in a 57% higher open rate. I mean, tell me which one of these emails you would rather open, get higher open rates on your emails or 5 tips to boost open rates. Right. Even though the content of the email is the exact same and the promise is the exact same, and you sort of know what you're going to get, the one with the number is way more enticing because it is clear, concise, and it implies that if you open this email, I'm going to give you five tips to boost my email open rate. Right. It's a really great example of a preview, open loop. All right, on to number four. Use emojis, but not too much. Okay, listen, I know that not everybody loves emojis. I personally am obsessed with them and have to try really hard to not overuse them. But that's actually how I talk, like, when I'm texting my friends. Emojis are not only a great way to convey a message of feeling or emotion without even needing to use a word, but when it comes to subject lines, they are also a great way to stand out in the inbox. Right. For a lot of the same reasons why using numbers stand out. They act as that visual break from the wall of text, and they convey so much in just one character. Emojis are so effective at this that 56% of brands who use emojis in their subject lines have higher open rates. Interesting. Now, of course, there are some caveats to this, and we will discuss the big one, which is that it can be really easy to get carried away with your emoji usage, which is not only annoying, but it also makes you look maybe a little bit like spam. Right? So try to keep emojis in the subject line down to one, because, honestly, even two can feel a little bit excessive. And the second caveat, of course, is that you need to keep your audience in mind. If your emojis are not your typical brand voice, mo, then using them just for the sake of using them might feel, you know, inauthentic to your reader. And just like we talked about in tip Number one, never sacrifice the integrity of your brand just to get a few extra clicks. It is not worth it. All right, last but not least, this is really important. Number five, length matters. Keep your subject lines short and punchy. Subject lines with about five to seven words tend to perform best, and that makes a lot of sense when you consider how people are reading emails for the most part. In fact, 81% of them are checking their email on here, which means you have a lot less space before your subject line is just completely, completely cut off. So this can make writing a great subject line kind of tricky because you need to communicate value and curiosity and, you know, do all of that in just a few words. But luckily we don't have to just cap it at seven words because you can also utilize the preview text, AKA the meta description of the email. This is that second line of text that pops up as a preview in the inbox, right, right after the subject line. Now, this is really important real estate that you want to make sure you are using, using. And you never want the preview text to be the same as the subject line or even just the opening line of an email because you're wasting a lot of real estate, right? My favorite way to use preview text is to treat it like a continuation of the subject line. It's kind of a sneaky way to add more context and get your readers to, you know, engage with your email without cramming it all in those, like five to seven words. Now, of course, this goes without saying, you're not going to be able to do all of these tips in one subject line. The goal is to determine the type of message you're sending and then choose the tip that really works for best for that subject line and then mix them out throughout your email calendar, right? So use one, then use another, then go back, whatever. And of course, you can also test different angles for the same email. So if we're using an example, let's use the same one we were talking about earlier, right? I'm writing a subject line for this YouTube video. I could say get higher open rates on your emails, right? But that could be made way better by using any of the following tips in this video. You might decide to play up the brand voice. Holy shit. Check out these open rates, right? Or ask a question. Want higher open rates? Or you could use a number five tips to boost open rates. Or of course, you could use an emoji like these open rates are rocket emoji. And then of course, all of your subject lines should follow tip number five. Keep it short and simple between five to seven words if possible. And like I said, consider split testing your subject lines on every email you send. This is the best way to really figure out what resonates with your audience and you will learn a lot. Now if you want to learn all 11 key insights that we learned from our hundreds of split tests and see our top 50 winning subject lines, make sure to grab a copy of my free report that reveals all of our split test data and results. We had so much fun putting this together for you guys. You will find a link to that in the description box below and I will see you next week with a brand new video. Until then, I'm Alex. Ciao for now. All right guys, if you enjoyed that video, make sure to check out the next one for me right here and you can click right here to get a free gift. What do I send to my email list? We have all been there. Sitting awake at midnight, smack dab in the middle of a big promotion or launch, staring at a blank screen and a blinking cursor with no idea what we're going to write in tomorrow's promo email. Or dragging your feet when you need to write yet another useless content email when you have absolutely no nothing new or interesting to say, or you're confused about how to keep your list engaged and buying from you in between launches without annoying the crap out of them and getting a bunch of unsubscribes. If you struggle with any of these things, then this video is for you. Because I'm going to show you how to plan your email marketing calendar for the next full year and tell you how to get insider access to my brand new email marketing calendar filled with 279 notable dates, seasons and reasons to email your list and make predictable profits. And yes, you're going to get it for free, so you definitely want to stick around. Keep watching.
