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How many times have you received an email with a subject line that said something like “Question” or “FYI”? Or, worse yet, had no subject at all? For all the millions of email messages that traverse the Internet every day, the ability to effectively formulate an indicative subject message seems to be fairly unimportant to most people. A quick skim of the last 100 or so email messages you’ve received will likely support my claims.
It is because of this seemingly global issue of email subject apathy that I give you this (what I consider to be) definitive guide to creating the perfect email subject.
There are 3 simple tips that, if implemented properly, will make your email subject (and, subsequently, your email) much easier to read.
- Use ‘Keywords’ - All email messages fall into one or more of 4 possible categories:
- Questions (or messages that elicit a response from the reader)
- Responses (messages that are in response to questions or other inquiring messages)
- Informational (or FYI - messages that are meant to inform but don’t require a response)
- Spam (jokes, pictures of your nephew’s baseball game, etc. - as well as actual spam)
The first tip is a simple one - label your messages with one of these keywords. For example, if I’m going to be emailing my buddy Ted about the fishing trip this weekend and I’d like him to respond, my subject might look something like: “Question: Fishing Trip this weekend”. Alternately, if I need to email my entire family about my upcoming appearance in GQ, it might resemble this: “FYI: Upcoming GQ appearance”.
Basically, use a keyword from one of these 4 categories to immediately identify what type of message it is. Personally, I like “Question“,”Response“,”FYI” and “Spam“. This makes it very easy to quickly skim the inbox (or, better yet, sort it) and pick out which stuff needs to be acted upon. Very GTD-ish, eh?
- Briefly describe the subject - This is best done before you start writing your message. Finding the right balance between vague and overly-specific can be tough. Personally, I think it’s like anything else - you get better at it with time. A few examples of what I mean:
Let’s say you’re emailing a coworker about a presentation you’ll be giving to Joe’s Chili Cookery next week. You’re not sure if you should use the green pepper graphic or the red pepper graphic. Some people would be tempted to create a subject like this: “Are we using the green pepper or the red pepper graphic for the Joe’s Chili presentation?”. For extra bonus points, they might also leave the email body completely blank (for shame). Honestly, it’s called “Subject” for a reason - you don’t need to spell out the particulars in that field, it’s just there to give an idea what the body of the email is about. A better subject might be : “Question: Joe’s Chili Presentation - Graphic”. Hell, you could omit the “Graphic” bit altogether. You know why? Because the recipient will read all about that in the body of the email. The point is to be brief and concise.
Using the same example, some other folks might have a subject like this: “Graphic”. Obviously, that’s terribly vague and says virtually nothing about the rest of the message.
Give a preview of what’s to come - don’t try to shoehorn the whole message into the subject, and don’t make the recipient open the email just to figure out what the hell you’re talking about.
- For Pete’s sake, never leave the subject blank - This is something I’ve mentioned before, and it bears repeating. Let me break this down for you…
Tom walks over to Mary’s desk and asks, “Mary, can you fire over that Proposal template again? I’ve somehow lost my copy!”. Mary says “Sure thing, Tom!” and immediately opens a new email message. She drags the document into the window, fills in Tom’s address and hits “Send”. So, what’s wrong with leaving the subject blank in this situation? Well, a blank subject accomplishes one pretty crippling thing:
It makes damn sure Tom will never be able to find the email again - Most email applications (I’m looking at you, Outlook/Outlook Express) have what could only jokingly be referred to as “search capabilities”. So, if Tom takes the email and drops it into his “Templates” archive folder, the next time he needs it he’ll have to search through every message Mary has sent him without a subject (and there will surely be several) to figure out which one contains the template he’s looking for. So, Mary’s doing Tom a disservice by being to lazy to type “Proposal Template” in the subject line of the email before sending it.
The subject of an email isn’t as superfluous or unimportant as the world would have you believe. Taking just a few seconds to build a proper and accurate subject will save you (when you go back through your Sent Items) and your recipients (when they’re digging through their Archives) much happier people. The email subject becomes much more important a few months down the road than it is initially, I think.
So, please, fill in the subject. And do it correctly.
Technorati Tags: email, subject, productivity, outlook, gtd
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21 Responses to “How to Construct the Perfect Email Subject Line”
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“For extra bonus points, they might also leave the email body completely blank”
Aaah! I hate when people do that. My old boss used to do that all the time. The entire email was in the subject line, and nothing in the body. Not cool, not cool at all.
Good post.
The empty subject line is always a pain in the arse. I’ve learned to immediately forward the offending email to myself if it’s an actionable item and/or reference material and add a descriptive subject to it. Using Mail.app, you can actually redirect it to yourself after you’ve appended the subject, so you can search it by who sent the original message. It takes an extra 5-seconds, but it’s saved me much more time when I’ve had to recall that message.
My favorites that I put at the beginning of the subject is:
REPLY REQD: … rest of subject …
ACTION REQD: … rest of subject …
REQD = requested.
My recipients know what’s expected of them before they read the email.
Another tip is to append the word “(end)” to the subject if there is no body. This is great for giving short FYI messages, and the recipients can then delete the email without even looking at the body. E.g.:
“Working from home today (end)”
“Reminder: Meeting starts in 5 minutes (end)”
But this is no excuse to write very long subjects, like:
Are we using the green pepper or the red pepper graphic for the Joe’s Chili presentation?”
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Mr Contrarian here. I believe you can ask the question about the green pepper in the subject line if you add >, >,> or something like that. From a pure productivity point of view, the recipient can add either “Yes” or No” to the subject line and attach >. Now, that’s productivity. Especially when you are getting dozens or more e-mails a day.
BTW, I challenge everyone to send e-mails that do not have vertical scroll bars.
Mr. Contrarian here again, Seems like I actually stumbled into some HTML code. The comment above referred to ending the subject line with “Message Ends,” or “EOM,” etc.
We use phrases like
(eom) - end of message
(eom;nrn) - end of message; no reply necessary
at the end of subject lines to indicate a blank message.
Less commonly, we might preface a subject with:
[fyi]
[action]
[SAVE]
Evil, evil, evil — The worst thing you can possibly do is start your email in the subject.
Subject: It is important that everyone attend the
Body: meeting this Friday in the conference room.
Semi-evil — Not changing the subject when the thread changes. Messages go back and forth, we all know that. If you reply to someone for an entirely different purpose, or the thread has morphed so much that there’s no connection to the original reason someone emailed, I advocate changing the subject to stay relevant with what’s currently happening. (Some may disagree with me on this entire idea, but for us, it makes sense.) I have my Notes set-up to mimic Gmail in that all emails with the same subject are grouped together. Takes up far less space in my inbox and allows me to more quickly focus on a single issue.
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1…
one of the biggest reasons to craft a good subject line is that spam bots love to trash emails based on the subject line..
i can’t tell you how many people have sent me emails that end up going right to the spam box.. and i never see them..
when i start digging around, i see subjects like:
“hey!”
believe it or not, the people who i see making this mistake are grown up business people .. very odd..
I use to put the project name, or the main subject of the email, in square brackets, then the action to be taken, and eventually a double colon followed by a detail.
ex. Subject: [Web Portal] User activation :: James Brown
Body: complete user’s details
or
Subject: [Order] Supplier name :: external hard disk
Body: complete description of goods
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A wonderful additional keyword “Hoax”, which is actually an elaboration of the “Spam” category.
Please add to email etiquette: Never forward warnings about viruses, unless your expertise is the level of sys admin or better AND you’ve researched the warning on several sites like “hoaxbuster”.
In Outlook with the message open, when a sender leaves the subject line blank, you can type in a proper subject in the blank area. Then save the message. Now it will appear with the new subject line, making it easier for searching and sorting.
I like the idea and use it every now and again. The mails I find myself juggling with are the ones with some responses, some new questions, some new information to a product. Oh and by the way, CC-ed to a dozen others with individual questions etc.
These are the tough ones in my opinion…
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for business e-mail i try to use ‘three pronged” subject headers.
they go like this..
[PROJECT / SUBJECT AREA] : [ISSUE] : [ACTION]
here is an example..
ABC Installation Project: New Servers: Installation Schedule
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