50+ Email Subject Line Statistics And Trends In 2024

Email marketing has never lost its luster and effectiveness over the years. Many brands and businesses successfully use it to promote brand awareness, nurture customer relationships, and boost sales. It can be a fantastic marketing asset for any business.

Email subject lines matter the most when it comes to getting recipients to open your email. Here are more than 50 valuable email subject line statistics and trends. We’ve gathered these from trustworthy sources so that you can depend on them to fine-tune your email marketing strategies. 

General Email Subject Line Statistics

An email’s subject line has a big say in deciding whether or not the recipient gets attracted enough to open the email. Uninteresting subject lines often get deleted, or worse, end up in spam. Here are email subject line statistics.

• 33% of recipients decide to open an email because it has an attractive subject line.
  
  
• Another study found that 64% of recipients opened emails due to their subject lines (Barilliance, 2021).
  
  
• 69% of recipients tag emails as spam soon after seeing their subject line (Invesp, 2021).
  
  
• Email marketers spend 80% of their work time on fine-tuning their email copy and allot only a short duration to focus on the subject line.
  
  
• Announcement emails like those that have the word “alert” in their subject lines have 61.8% higher open rates (Hitneism).

Characters and words

The number of characters that comprise a marketing email’s subject line influences email conversions. Here are email subject line statistics in this regard.

• 82% of marketers ensure that their marketing emails have subject lines with a character limit of 60 (Convince & Convert).
  
  
• Those email subject lines that had a character limit not exceeding 30 performed above average concerning metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, and click-to-open rates (Adestra).
  
  
• Those email subject lines that had a character limit not exceeding 10 received the highest open rate of 58%. The second highest open rate is 42%, received by subject lines of 50 to 59-character length (Informz).
  
  
• More than 85% of emails have subject lines that are less than 90 characters short. This is because too long subject lines get cut off, leaving recipients clueless about what the email is about. This, particularly, is more vital for mobile readers as mobile displays have even limited characters for subject lines (Superoffice).
  
  
• On average, a character length between 61-70 in the subject lines is read 17%, which is the highest (Zippia).
  
  
• Email open rates are the highest when the word count is between one to five (Yesware).

Personalization

Advances in technology facilitate high levels of personalization, which is having a favorable impact on email marketing. 

• 34% of marketers in the UK and the US are reported to employ email subject line personalization (Adobe, 2020).
  
  
• Personalized email subject lines ensured that they are 22.2% more likely to be opened. But the drawback is that these emails have a lower-than-average click-through rate of 16.5% and a below-the-average click-to-open rate of 31.7% (Adestra).
  
  
• Personalized promotional emails have 29% higher open rates (Experian).
  
  
• Another study reports that emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to get opened.
  
  
• Yet another study reports that open rates shoot up by an enormous 50% with personalized email subject lines (Zippia).
  
  
• Including the email recipient’s first name in the subject line can increase the open rates by 13 to 28%.
  
  
• Multi-channel retailers experience 37% higher unique email open rates for personalized subject lines than non-personalized ones (Experian).

Spam

At times, marketers adopt unfair means such as false or dishonest messages in the subject lines to get the recipients to open their emails. Here are email subject line statistics related to spam. 

• With “coronavirus” being the most popular word used during the recent worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the highest (20.8%) number of malicious spam emails with this word in their subject line circulated in the UK (Statista, 2020).
  
  
• 13.2% of spam email subject lines sported the word “invoice” in them (Statista, 2020).
  
  
• 10.2% of potentially dangerous emails included the word “mail” in their subject lines (Statista, 2020).
  
  
• 70% of complaints revolving around spam are those sent by commercial emailers (ReturnPath).

Testing Email Subject Line Statistics

Email marketing can bring high returns on investment if carried out properly. That’s why marketers leave no stone unturned when honing their marketing emails. One of those is testing the subject lines for their emotional impact-triggered conversions. Here are email subject line statistics in this regard.

• 47% of marketers test subject lines before sending them out.
  
  
• Skandium, a British retailer of Scandinavian design and furniture, reports that by A/B testing their email subject lines, they boosted their CTR by 26.96% (Barilliance, 2021).

Emojis Email subject lines Statistics

The tactic of using emojis in email subject lines is an increasing trend. The stats given below will tell you why.

• 56% of businesses that use emojis in the subject lines of their emails enjoy increased open rates (Zippia).
  
  
• Emoji-rich email subject lines tend to be opened 8% more likely to be opened than those without any.
  
  
• Between 2015 and 2016 alone, the use of emojis in email subject lines surged by 775% (Appboy).

Best words Email Subject Line Statistics

Email marketing has been around for a long time. So, there are a lot of useful statistics into what works and what doesn’t when it comes to picking words for use in your subject line. We’ve presented some of those below.

• Emails that have subject lines bearing numbers in them enjoy 57% higher open rates (Zippia).
  
  
• Another study found that the presence of numbers in subject lines increased email open rates by 45% (Yesware).
  
  
• The presence of the word “video” in an email’s subject line rises its open rates by 7 to 13% (Zippia).
  
  
• The presence of the word “free” in an email’s subject line increases its open rates by 10% (Zippia).
  
  
• The most common words that occurred in 18.7% of email subject lines were “you/you”. The usage of these words in the subject lines keeps increasing by 3.4% every year (Experian).
  
  
• The second most commonly (16.6% of email subject lines) used words were “off” and “get”. The usage of these words in the subject lines keeps increasing by 5.2% every year (Experian).
  
  
• The word “free” incorporated in the email subject lines makes them 10% more likely to be opened (Zippia).
  
  
• Email subject lines that have the word “newsletter” incorporated in them have an 18.7% lower open rate (Zippia).
  
  
• The use of discount terms like “discount”, “half price”, “free”, “% off”, “save”, “early bird,” etc. in the email subject lines often led to low performance. However, there are exceptions for words such as “sale” and “voucher” (Adestra).
  
  
• Another study found five words, including “wonderful,” “content,” “go,” “just,” and “upgrade” to be the top performers in email subject lines (Alchemy Worx).
  
  
• Yet another study found the top performers to be “jokes,” “monthly,” “promotional,” “forecast,” “voluntary”, “congratulations,” “revision,” “token,” “deduction,” and “snapshot” (Alchemy Worx).
  
  
• Another research reports that “available,” “weekend,” “free delivery,” “new,” “alert,” “update,” “news,” and “summer” (Adestra).
  
  
• Another study reports that “issue” and “top stories” perform better than average for click-to-open rates (Adestra).
  
  
• The only benefit-related word to perform better than average on the email subject line was “latest” (Adestra).
  
  
• Emails with the word “Fw:” in their subject lines were opened 17% less than those without it (Invesp).

Conversions

The ultimate aim of email marketing is converting the recipient. This may take shapes such as reading your blog, buying a product from you, downloading an e-book, etc. This section presents email subject line statistics in this regard.

• Emotional content in email subject lines works 94% more effectively in attracting the audience compared to rational content (Zippia).
  
  
• 68% of people report having purchased a product because of the FOMO created by witnessing someone’s experience. Email marketers should take advantage of this statistic to increase conversions through email marketing (Mention).
  
  
• Incentivized abandoned cart email subject lines motivate customers to purchase the things they have left in their cart without purchasing. However, less than half (44%) of e-commerce businesses include rewards in their abandoned cart email subject lines (Tidio).
  
  
• Email subject lines that evoked urgency boosted the open rates by 22% on average (Zippia).
  
  
• Email subject lines have a big influence on the open rates. The open rate, on average, across all industries is 21.33%.
  
  
• The government sector enjoys the highest email open rate of 28.77%.
  
  
• The second highest-ranking sectors (27.74%) concerning email open rates are photography, sketching, and writing. This is followed by religious emails (27.62%).
  
  
• Email open rates on mobile devices are 41.9%. The majority of this section comprises the younger generation.
  
  
• 68% of employees prefer opening their emails on desktops and PCs. The email open rate for these devices is only 16.2%.
  
  
• The presence of interactive content boosted conversions by 70% (Jeffbullas). This is something that email marketers should take advantage of while creating subject lines.
  
  
• 10% higher open rates are received for emails that have a question in their subject lines (Yesware).

Email subject line statistics and trends can guide your marketing

The reason why email subject line statistics and trends matter is that they can give brands and their marketers some valuable insights into boosting the effectiveness of their email marketing. Put the stats presented in our blog to get inspired and set yourself on the pathway to conversion. We wish you the very best in your endeavors!

With the NotifyVisitors A/B testing feature, experiment with different email subject lines. To learn more about our product, schedule a free demo.

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