It seems to me when people talk about subject lines in emails, it inevitably leads to asking the question of "how do I write more effective ones?"
The problem with that question is that it misses the major point of why you're sending the email in the first place. Are you trying to sell something through direct response? Are you trying to get the recipient to forward it to help build up your email list? Is your major purpose branding? Do you know your purpose at all?
The point is that answering the question of how to write effective subject lines better, must be preceded by understanding your purpose for sending it in the first place.
For example, as Dave Dabbah, writing for iMedia mentioned recently, it can come down to even understanding your customers to the point of knowing whether they will be storing the email - and how, thus making it easier for them to find it later. So the subject line could be written partly for that purpose as well.
The bottom line in all of this is rather than thinking only about ourselves and getting that customer to do what we want, it can really change things by looking at it from their perspective. What can be done for them that makes it easy to work with? How can an email be stored? What would make it easy for them to know it is you when they go back to look for it?
Why not even send emails to your list that ask them what would help them the most in the subject line when you email them?
These types of things deal with developing a long-term, profitable relationship on both sides. A lot of what we right in the subject line needs to start before we even think of how to write it, and focus on our customer and how it can be written for them.
I know that this wouldn't be quite as important in direct response, but it depends upon the strategy and lifetime value of the customer you're trying to develop. Long-term I think it would be much more profitable to think in this way.
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