How to Create More Powerful Blog Titles, Email Subjects, and Marketing Headlines

Titles, Subjects, and Headlines: Short Stories For Marketing

Successful marketing relies on awesome introductions: your business thrives on first impressions.

Subject lines and headlines need to be just as fantastic as the content they announce, to ensure readers actually bother checking out the email campaigns and blog articles you pour your heart and soul into writing. Once you take into consideration that titles and subjects should also be short, snappy, and SEO ready, you might start wondering how your efforts stack up.

Luckily, the Original Ginger team knows digital marketing inside out, and we want to share our expertise with you! Keep our list of subject power words and headline helper styles at hand to make sure that your content is grabbing (and keeping!) attention, right from the start.

What Effective Subjects and Headlines Do: The Six Word Story

When you create a stunning email campaign, or write an engaging blog article, what you are really doing is storytelling. No one wants to have a hard sales pitch shoved in their face, to try and slog through a dry 10,000 word piece, or to read all about how extra super great and amazing your brand is. Just like in face to face interactions, the most effective communication is a story with a focus on emotion that will engage you, a narrative that will pique your curiosity, or a topic that will resonate with you personally. Boring writing that is too long, borders on bragging, or is overly aggressive in sales tactics just won’t tell a good tale about your business.

Once you’ve written your ‘story,’ there’s still a chance it won’t even be read- which is why your email subject lines and article headlines need to be on point! Try boiling the essence of your piece down to about six effective words: between five and eight is the optimal sweet spot for subject and title length. Make sure you check the amount of characters too — anything between 60 to no more than 65 characters works best for SEO. There’s a lot of crossover when it comes to writing the best leading lines for emails and articles, so let’s go over them now.

Power Words For Email Excellence

What makes this list so darn powerful, you ask? We’ve chosen these hardworking words because they do double duty for your email subject lines: they’re captivating, emotional, and compelling, and they won’t trigger spam filters or firewalls by sounding like junk. Use them in your headlines too – break up the monotony of clichéd vocabulary and find new, more exciting ways to present your creative.

Special Styles as Headline Helpers

Once you’ve got your story written and the best words to describe it, consider using one of these proven headline types to pull everything together.

Use Numbers for Impact

Numbers visually stand out from lines of text, quantify value, and as an added bonus, will help keep your character count down.

[#] ____________ You Need To ___________
Example: 20 Free Stock Images You Need To Download to Spice Up Your Blog

[#] ___________ That Will _____________ You
Example: 5 Powerful Words That Will Inspire You

[#] ____________ _____________ To Try Right Now

Get ____________ With [#] _____________

Offer Advice or Reasons Why

People respond well when they can immediately understand how reading your creative will directly help them.

How To Create ______ That Gets _______

[#] Foolproof Tips For __________

Why _______ Will Help You _________

What To Do With _________

Ask a Question

Nothing engages a reader like a question that they feel compelled to discover the answer to, or that they feel seeks their opinion.

Can ________ Make Your _______?

Your ________ Is _________: Now What?

Will Your ________ Be _________?

Do You Think ______ Is The New ______?

Try a Little Mystery

Readers will be fascinated if you give just enough detail to whet their appetite, without being too vague or click-baity.

[#] Secrets Of ________

The Strange Ways Your _______ Is ______

[#] Things Your _______ Doesn’t Tell You

Are You Making This _______ Mistake?

Create Some Scarcity

We are inherently worried that we will miss out on… something. A sense of urgency (without being too pushy) is a great way to engage your readers.

Last Chance To _______ Before ________

[#] _________ To Try Right Now

Your _______ Will ________, Today Only

These [#] ________ Will Expire Tonight

Try mixing and matching some powerful words into our clever headline styles to create super effective titles and subjects for your digital marketing. By leveraging unexpected vocabulary and some helpful headline starters, you’ll have no trouble perfecting your articles and increasing your open rates.

You may find it helpful to use a tool like BuzzSomo to research the topic(s) you want to write about. This tool provides insights on similar topics trending on the internet and their engagement across various social media platforms. It’s a great way to find out what your competition is doing and how successful they are at doing it. At the very least, it can provide some inspiration when crafting your headlines, whether it be for a blog post or an email campaign.

If you still need some pointers, or would rather focus on running your business without stressing over marketing, Original Ginger can help you discover and share your brand’s story with the world. Give us a call at 778.298.1966 or Toll Free at 1.855.298.8650. You can also contact us by completing our online form.