You know by now that email marketing is an incredibly powerful tool for staying connected and engaging with your audience, but the success of your email efforts hinges on one crucial detail: whether or not your subscribers are opening your emails.
And this is why your subject line, including the preheader text, is vitally important.
A strong subject line can mean the difference between an email being opened and read or being ignored and possibly trashed. But coming up with catchy, clever, attention-grabbing subject lines can often be the most frustrating part of creating and sending an email campaign.
Enter ChatGPT by OpenAI.
While there are many unknowns around AI and ChatGPT, this technology can be very helpful in developing and tweaking subject lines for your email campaigns. (Especially if you’re hesitant to use AI and ChatGPT on website content because you’re worried about the possibility of SEO penalties, email is a great testing ground!) When you’re coming up short on creative ideas, this is merely another tool to have in your toolkit to create options designed to boost open rates and captivate your audience.
Here are six ways to use ChatGPT for subject line optimization:
1. Brainstorming Creative Subject Lines
Use ChatGPT to help you generate creative and impactful subject lines. To get started, provide ChatGPT with context about your email content, your target audience, and the key message you want to convey. If you’ve already written the email, try pasting the full email into the prompt.
ChatGPT can then offer suggestions for subject lines that align with your campaign’s goals. For example, if you’re promoting a summer sale, you could ask ChatGPT for subject line ideas like:
- “Don’t Miss Out on Summer Savings Extravaganza!”
- “Beat the Heat with Our Hot Summer Deals!”
- “Sizzle into Savings: Your Exclusive Summer Discounts”
2. Creating Options for A/B Testing and Follow-Ups
A/B testing is a common practice in email marketing, and ChatGPT can assist in generating ideas for subject line variations to test. It can suggest different subject lines, explain why each might be effective, and help you set up experiments to optimize open rates over time.
For instance, if you need to figure out whether a straightforward or a curiosity-driven subject line would work better, ChatGPT can provide options for both to help you decide.
This same practice can be applied to resends and follow-ups you schedule for subscribers who didn’t open the original campaign send.
3. Infusing Emotional Appeal
Emotions move readers and can play a powerful role in your email subject line, moving subscribers to open your emails out of curiosity, excitement, or urgency. ChatGPT can help infuse emotional appeal into subject lines by suggesting words, phrases, or storytelling elements to evoke specific emotions.
Consider these emotionally charged subject lines:
- “Get Ready to be Inspired: Our Success Stories Inside”
- “Is FOMO Settling In? Only 5 Days Left”
- “Get Ready for the Adventure of a Lifetime!”
For the prompt, summarize the content you’ll be sending, the target audience, and the emotion you’d like to spark, then sit back to see the options ChatGPT comes up with.
4. Writing for Clarity and Conciseness
While creativity is essential, clarity and conciseness are equally important. Your subject line should clearly and concisely preview your email’s content without being overly lengthy. ChatGPT can help you refine subject lines to strike the right balance.
For instance, if you’re announcing a new product launch, ChatGPT can help you transform a long-winded subject line like “Introducing Our Innovative New Product Lineup for This Season” into a concise and compelling one, such as “New Season, New Innovations!”
5. Generating Seasonal and Trendy Subject Lines
Seasonal and trendy email subject lines can make your emails more relevant and appealing. Like sparking emotional reactions from your subject lines above, use a similar prompt to generate options that align with holidays, special occasions, or current events relevant to your industry or niche.
For example, ChatGPT can help you craft subject lines around seasonal ingredients, Holiday recipes, or dietary trends if you’re a recipe blogger.
6. Avoiding Spam Triggers
To ensure your emails reach subscribers’ inboxes, avoid common spam triggers in your subject lines.
*If you’re a FeedBlitz client, we stop your email before it tries to leave our servers if our spam filters catch anything, but this tip will still be beneficial in avoiding our warning and list suspension!
Use ChatGPT for guidance on what to avoid, such as excessive capital letters, special characters, or spammy keywords. This will help you avoid spam traps and increase the likelihood of your emails getting to the inbox.
Bonus Tip:
Do you have more than one option you really like for a subject line? Try using these tips on your preheader text as well (or instead)! As a reminder, the preheader text appears just after your subject line in email applications and is a great place to grab your subscriber’s attention and offer a little more insight into the email’s content. This way, you’ll let no good subject line go to waste.
Measure the success of your subject lines with real-time data and analytics.
Using ChatGPT-generated subject lines is just the first step of this process. Check the success of your subject lines by regularly reviewing your campaigns’ open rates, click-through rates, and engagement data. This will let you know which subject lines resonated the most with your list and help you refine your subject line strategy even better.
Creating compelling, impactful email subject lines is both an art and a science. Working with ChatGPT, you can boost your existing optimization efforts. Whether you need creative ideas, help with A/B testing, or sparking emotional appeal, ChatGPT can be a valuable addition to your email marketing toolbox.
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