Two or three word subject lines

A senior buyer decides whether to open your email from the subject line and your name. Most subject lines waste that moment. They pitch, they tease, or they say Quick question, which tells the buyer nothing except that you want something.

Stage 1 writes subject lines short and specific. Two or three words that name the likely problem, or just their first name when they already know you.

What it writes

The subject is a small hypothesis. It names what the buyer is probably dealing with, in words they'd use themselves.

On a cold door, the subject comes from the signal that earned the message. A new executive gets Inherited backlog. Margin pressure gets Margin squeeze. Layoffs get Same work, fewer. An acquisition gets Two platforms. A carve-out gets Separation clock. An RFP gets Unwritten requirements. A stalled AI pilot gets Pilots stuck. A job opening that's sat open too long gets Seat still open.

On a warm door, the subject comes from the relationship. A former buyer gets Same problem, bigger. A referral gets Via and the first name of the person who referred you. A conference handoff gets After and the first words of the event's name. An account your firm served that went quiet gets Gone quiet. A history that went badly gets What went wrong. The Take-Away, for a seat with nothing fresh at the company, gets Solved, or not.

A note to a former colleague takes its subject from what changed for them. New seat, Wider seat, New boss, After the deal or The number.

When it's just their name

For a warm note or someone who knows you well, the subject line is their first name. Nothing else.

That's how you'd write to a friend. A clever subject line to someone who knows you reads as a sales email, and that's the one thing the note can't be. The first name says this is from a person, to a person.

Where you see it

The subject goes on the email step. When a person has an email address, the opener goes out on a second channel about six days after the LinkedIn message, with the subject Stage 1 picked for that door and signal.

Open the Desk and go to Going out. Each email shows its subject above the message, so you see both before you approve. Every email carries a plain line at the bottom that lets people reply stop.

Why short works for services buyers

A CIO at a mid-market company gets vendor email all day. The subject line that gets opened looks like it came from a peer. Short and about their problem.

Two or three words can't overclaim. Margin squeeze doesn't promise anything. It names a thing the buyer is already thinking about and lets them decide if you might know something. Compare that to a subject that promises to cut their costs, from a firm they've never heard of.

The body does the rest. The subject only has to earn the open, and it earns it by sounding like the buyer's own shorthand.

There's more on the thinking in subject lines for senior buyers and why quick question kills your email.

The point

Every email Stage 1 drafts has a subject that names the problem or names the person. Never a pitch, never a tease.