Creating email subject lines or the art of getting students to open your email

Keep it short and snappy!

Many students will be reading emails on their mobile devices. This means long subject lines are cut off and students might miss crucial information.

Aim for six to ten words in the subject line and get rid of less important words.

Use language that is clear, direct, and actionable.

Get students to focus on your subject line by using active voice.

Consider the sentence “I am going to study now.” It’s clear and direct, you know that the person, I, is going to do something, study. If you swap the sentence around so that the thing is in place of the person: “Study is going to be done by me now,” — it’s longer and sounds clumsy. Those two sentences show examples of using active and passive voice.

Active voice makes it clear who is doing the action. In contrast, passive voice creates longer and wordier sentences that do not achieve short subject lines. Here are a few examples of using active voice in a subject line:

• Jo, read your new study plan
• Grace, book in for this special study session

Avoid using “important” in the subject line as it’s an overused term that is often used subjectively by the writer. Unless the students’ enrolment, grades, or finances will be negatively impacted, then it’s probably not that important. See the below example:

✅ “Find out about changes to the BA Architecture,”

❌ “Important changes to the BA Architecture”.

In students’ crowded inboxes, including their name in the subject line creates relevancy, recognition, and connection with the sender. It is the equivalent of someone calling you by name in a room full of people; when this happens, we are inclined to start a conversation.

A personalised approach = student perception of it as personally relevant.

You can place the student’s preferred name into the subject line by merging information from a database. If you can do this, great! If not, contact the DASE Communications Team and we will do our best to help you.

Include a call-to-action in your subject line to improve your understanding of why students should read your email. A call-to-action is usually a verb that explains what you want students to do. Some examples of call-to-action verbs include the following:

• Jin, read about changes to the Bachelor of Science study plan
• Alex, find out if you are eligible to study overseas
• Fatima, start the survey and enter to win a $100 gift card
• Jon, finalise your assignment by Week 6

A good way to keep learning about subject lines is by doing A/B testing. Send two emails with different subject lines so you can compare how the changes impact your results. Other ways to learn from A/B tests include what periods during the semester your email gets more opens and if students are more inclined to click on linked text or a button.