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Many marketers mistakenly reveal the entire value of an email in the subject line, killing any reason to open it. To maximize opens, provide a compelling hint or create a curiosity gap rather than giving away the full story.

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Frame email subject lines to appeal to the higher-level position your audience desires. A manager wants to know what a CMO is doing. This psychological tactic, which plays on ambition, can lift open rates by 24-28% over standard personalization by speaking to who your audience wants to become.

A counterintuitive email marketing test is to have no preheader text. This creates visual whitespace in the recipient's inbox, making the email stand out from the clutter and potentially boosting open rates by up to 15%. A simple code snippet, which can be sourced from ChatGPT, is needed to prevent clients from auto-filling the space.

While many marketers use brackets at the beginning of email subject lines, new data from subjectline.com shows placing them at the end is boosting open rates. This tactic works by drawing the reader's eye to a key callout, and contrary to myth, it does not negatively impact deliverability or land emails in spam.

The email preheader is crucial for engagement. Beginning this preview text with a 'continuation word' like 'and,' 'but,' or 'plus' creates a cognitive link to the subject line. This simple linguistic trick encourages the reader's eye to keep moving and significantly lifts open rates.

Data from Subjectline.com reveals a powerful, simple tactic for email marketing. Using a "continuation pre-header" that begins with "and," "but," or "plus" creates a narrative link to the subject line, sparking curiosity and significantly boosting open rates. This is an easy-to-implement test for any campaign.

Switching from clear but safe subject lines (e.g., '3 ways to...') to provocative, curiosity-piquing ones dramatically improved open rates. The speaker notes that if a subject line feels slightly uncomfortable to send, it's probably a good sign.

A counterintuitive yet effective email tactic is capitalizing an entire word in the middle of a subject line, not at the start or end. This simple, cost-free A/B test is trending because it breaks visual patterns in the inbox, leading to a reported 16% open rate increase for B2B and 21% for B2C.

To make an email stand out, use a subject line under three words and remove the preheader text. This creates visual white space around your message, distinguishing it from the 98% of emails that use preheaders. This visual disruption can skyrocket open rates.

Explicitly telling recipients to 'Open this' or 'Open this email' in the subject line can lead to a significant lift in open rates. This direct command, while seemingly simple, taps into our subconscious tendency to follow instructions and stands out in a crowded inbox.

Challenge your target audience's identity to provoke an open. A subject line like "Not for advanced marketers" piques the curiosity of that exact group, who open the email to prove the statement wrong or see why they are being excluded.