Can you share an example of an email subject line that performed exceptionally well? What made it stand out?

Email Subject Line Example: "Don't Miss Out—50% Off Ends Tonight!"

This subject line performed exceptionally well, boosting open rates and driving conversions. Here’s why it stood out:

• Urgency and Scarcity: The phrase “Ends Tonight” creates a sense of urgency, pushing recipients to act quickly rather than putting it off. This type of language triggers the fear of missing out (FOMO), which is a strong emotional driver, making readers feel like they must open the email to avoid missing an opportunity.
• Specific Offer: The “50% Off” is a clear and tangible benefit immediately telling recipients what value they’ll receive. Including a specific discount makes the offer concrete, which grabs attention and encourages action, especially when paired with a sense of urgency.
• Concise and Direct: The subject line is concise and easy to understand. Readers can see exactly what they’ll gain and why they need to act now. Clarity and brevity are crucial for cutting through the noise in crowded inboxes.
• Action-Oriented Language: Starting with “Don’t Miss Out” is a strong call to action that speaks directly to the recipient. It encourages an immediate emotional response, prompting readers to click before it's too late.

By combining urgency, a specific benefit, direct language, and emotional appeal, this subject line stood out in inboxes, drove higher open rates, and ultimately led to increased sales.

This Answer Contains Two (2) High Performing
Cold Email Subject Lines And WHY They Worked

Hey there, Jacob here.

I've been writing sales emails for over 10 years now. My clients and I have brought in tens of millions of dollars through email alone. The most business I've ever personally done through email was over $400,000 in one sale.

These are the two highest performing cold email subject lines that I am aware of:

1. Yo, {firstname}!

-and-

2. {firstname}, meet {salesperson} 

Why did they work so well?

To understand that, you really need to understand cold email at a deep level by answering this question:

What is the #1 objective of any cold email that will help you achieve your goals in the best way possible?

In other words, what is the one lever you can pull that will have the biggest effect on the outcome of your campaign?

And the answer to that is, deliverability. Specifically, getting your email not only out of the spam folder, but into the inbox.

Why? Because spam never gets read. It doesn't matter how convincing your email is, if it never gets read then it's a wasted send. The same goes (to a lesser degree) to the promotions folder, and even the updates folder.

On the other side of the coin, email that makes it into the inbox almost always gets read. It at least receives a cursory glance.

That's the most important thing.

The second most important thing is making your subject line authentic.

Using spam tactics to get into the inbox doesn't work, if the person can act as their own spam filter within a second of seeing the email.

Subjects lines that rely on false premises don't work, because even if it ends up in their inbox, the human can tell they are spam right away anyways and will throw them away without even giving them that cursory glance.

So the second (even more genius) reason these email subject lines work so well is that they are authentic.

We're not saying we know them, we're not pretending to be their vendor (yet), we're making the introduction in a warm way that spam filters can easily assume is from someone that person actually knows.

Understand this:

There are only 3 objectives of any cold email subject line.

Just three. In order of importance they are:

1. Get the email as close to the primary inbox as possible

2. Get the email opened

3. Set up the reader with the right expectation so they will actually read the email

Once you achieve those 3 objectives, there's realistically nothing else the subject line can do. The rest of the job is on the email to actually convince, offer value, and entice your reader into taking action.

This Was Out Of Our Hands.

This email was targeted towards customers who pre-ordered but didn't get their order on time.

Instead of trying to control the situation, which was literally out of hand, we let the customers know what was up.

The cargo went missing because of bad weather (we provided images inside the email as well) but the drop-shipping store promised to deliver the goods from the upcoming delivery.

The goal? To stop refunds and 1-star reviews from happening.

Compared to that, paying out of pocket to deliver the promised goods made more sense.

That is what we did. And the campaign was a massive success.

Not only did we stop refunds and negative reviews from happening...

Customers were leaving 5-star reviews and some even posted on social media, with a hashtag that went viral, praising how customer service should be done using our store's example.

This led to an influx of pre-orders and the store profited 5X more, which nobody (even I) anticipated.