Because of their low cost and easy set-up, email marketing campaigns have exploded over the past decade, with everyone from high-profile Fortune 500 brands to small businesses now using email to both find new prospects and nurture existing relationships. But the sheer volume of companies using email has turned the medium into a bit of a double-edged sword for many marketers: Not only have consumers become increasingly wary of unsolicited messages, significantly reducing “open” rates, but the rising use of spam filters, which often target particular keywords and phrases in subject lines, stops many marketing e-mails from ever reaching a target’s in-box.

What this means is that marketers must be particularly creative when it comes to crafting subject lines. “The subject line is the most important part of e-communications,” stresses Grant Johnson, president and CEO of the Brookfield, Wis.–based marketing agency Johnson Direct. “It’s the equivalent of the outer envelope in your direct mail package, and the purpose of any subject line should be to get the email opened.”

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Writing a winning subject line has become an art, an art that many companies still haven’t quite mastered. Here are seven surefire tips for crafting subject lines that will drive recipients to open — and read — your email:

1. Leverage your company brand. “Almost every subject line that I write, I try to find some excuse to incorporate the company name into it,” explains Ben Chestnut, cofounder and partner at the Atlanta-based email marketing firm MailChimp. “A subject line that says ‘70 Percent Off from Acme Bananas’ is going have a far better response than one that simply says ‘70 Percent Off.’”

2. Keep it short and simple. “People tend to make subject lines too long, and because of over-communication, people today want simplicity,” Johnson says. “A subject line like “From Omaha Steaks — the Shipping Is on Us’ will work a work a lot better than a complicated message.”

3. Think segmentation. “It’s important to test different subject lines for different customer segments,” says Jim Sterne, president of Santa Barbara, Calif.–based Target Marketing and the author of Advanced Email Marketing. “What works with one group may not work for another. That’s why you should always test every subject line before sending them out to various audiences.”

4. Question almost everything. “Subject lines that [pose a] question, such as ‘Is There a Book Inside You?’, tend to work very well,” says Bob Bly, a Dumont, N.J.–based copywriting expert and author of The White Paper Marketing Handbook. “Anything that can pique the curiosity of the recipient is bound to have a better chance of getting opened.”

5. Make it about them, not you. One mistake online marketers often make with subject lines is failing to take the recipient into account. “‘We’re Having a Sale’ won’t cut it as a subject line,” Sterne says. “But ‘You Can Save Money’ does, because it drives home the value proposition you want to deliver.”

6. Don’t be afraid of free. Some marketers don’t like including the word “free” in a subject line because it can often trigger a spam filter. Bly, however, says it’s worth the risk because the word free has proven to lift response rates. “The subject line ‘Free Guide: How to Build a Dock” will tend to work more often than not,” he notes.

7. Inform before you sell. “If you describe what’s in the email in the subject line, a recipient will be much more likely to open it,” Johnson points out. “Marketers tend to get too clever, but if you try to inform first and then sell, you’ll be much more successful than if you try to sell right off the bat.”

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