Every time you send an email you’re asking someone to make a decision.

Open this now or later.

Prioritize it or put in the “I’ll get to it later” pile.  (And later never comes.)

When you write your spouse, your best friend, your boss, you write a subject line that will help them understand why you are writing, help them understand how important the message is (or isn’t), help communicate something.  The subject line is the second thing they see when your email arrives (the first thing they see is that you sent it).

If it goes without saying that you would never, ever, send one person an email with the same subject line each and every time, how can it be that I still get newsletters whose subject is the name of the newsletter, conference invites whose subject is the name of the conference, offers from companies with the company name as the subject in big capital letters?

As in: NONPROFIT NEWSLETTER VOL 3

Or

SOLAR INDUSTRY CONFERENCE SPECTACULAR

Why oh why?

Just because you are writing something for an institution doesn’t mean you’re supposed to sound like an institution.  Please, sound like you.