How to Create Link Building Outreach Subject Lines That Get Opened

As a link builder, SEO specialist, or sales rep, email marketing is a pivotal tool in your outreach arsenal. 

But encouraging your audience to open your emails doesn’t always come easy … does it?

With other brands competing for your target customer’s attention, you may be constantly wondering how to position yourself to stand out among the rest. 

And while there’s no “fool-proof” strategy for winning over a crowded inbox, the good news is you can do your best to get your foot in the door quicker.

By taking the time to thoroughly plan your email subject lines, you can stimulate curiosity, demonstrate benefits, and (if all goes well) nudge your recipients toward conversion. 

Ready to learn more about how to create link building outreach subject lines that get opened? 

Let’s begin!

1. Know Your Target Customer

What kinds of brands will you be reaching out to and why? What industry are they in? What’s their company size? How can link building help them reach their brand visibility and authority goals?

In this step, get laser-clear on your target customer. You should get really specific on this. For example, specifying your target customer as an email marketing agency for banks is much better than targeting all email marketing agencies. Make sure to niche down in terms of both your target customer and their sub-niche. 

Then, decide who you’ll be reaching out to, specifically. 

Which brings us to …

2. Create your link building outreach list

Take a look at your Linkedin prospecting list, email list, outreach list, and CRM and decide which brands you’ll be reaching out to. Start by choosing the hottest leads and then the warm ones. Fill out the rest of your list with relevant cold prospects. 

Pro tip: When targeting cold leads, try asking for a small request first. As you build trust, you can start increasing your offer requests little by little.

For instance, if you wanted to offer link building services to a SaaS company, like PetScreening, you might ask if the team can meet with you for a brief 15 minute call before offering your services. 

Or, you could start the trust-building process early by sharing awesome results you helped other SaaS companies in the pet sector get. More on this in a bit.

3. Understand Your Target Customer’s Core Needs (and how you can solve them with link building strategies)

Putting yourself in your target customer's shoes is essential to understanding what their core needs are and how you can fulfill them with your link building solutions. 

Once you’re clear on how to meet their needs, you can create inspired and personalized subject lines with them in mind.

For instance, if you’d like to reach out to a credit card rewards company, you might discover that the company is struggling to convince high authority websites to feature its links. In this case, you can position yourself as an outreach expert that already has websites ready to feature the company’s links.

Or if you want to reach out to a B2B cyber security brand specializing in advanced features like  DDoS protection, you might discover the brand is having trouble finding guest post writers that are well-versed in cyber security. 

In this case, you can address its pain point head-on by sharing who on your team has ample experience writing guest posts for cybersecurity blogs.

4. Improve Your Email Deliverability Rate

Improve the chances of your email making it to your recipient’s inbox by following these email deliverability rate tips:

• Stay away from terms that could be flagged as spam (check with your email provider for a full list of spammy words)
• Use a professional email address that includes your first and last name
• Don’t send from an email address that has a brand name, symbols, numbers, or inappropriate terms 
• Add a headshot to your email profile — it’ll pop up next to your email address in the recipients inbox, demonstrating that you’re a real professional 
• Use an email verification tool to scan and confirm that all of your recipient addresses are correct and active

5. Conduct Research

To see which other subject lines have seen success, carve out time in your schedule to study articles, guides, and marketing books.

You might also consider attending training and seminars or taking a link building outreach course. You may need a SharePoint calendar to schedule these trainings if you're going to take them as a group.

6. Create your subject lines 

And finally, brainstorm and create your subject lines! When possible, personalize subject lines by addressing recipients by name — or, at the very least, do so when you greet them in the email body. 

When creating your subject lines, keep your target customer, their core needs, and your research top-of-mind.

Here are some subject lines you can refer to for inspiration.

Short and sweet curiosity builders

Grab your audience’s attention with these short and sweet curiosity-building subject lines:

• Got a sec?
• Got links?
• Know HA sites?
• Re: 
• (No subject)
• This is HUGE!
• Heads up
• Quick chat?
• Check-in
• You’ll never believe…
• Hi!
• Hello 
• Collab opportunity 🙂

Sense of urgency/FOMO subject lines

Create a fear of missing out and a sense of urgency with the following subject lines:

• Why you can’t afford to ignore link building 
• Link building webinar replay expires at midnight
• Today only: Free link building ebook available for download
• Spots are almost full: Have you booked your backlinks yet?
• New backlink clients get 20% off today only
• Last chance! Link building prices go up at midnight!
• We have a 24 hour sale with your name on it
• 3-day-only sale: 100 backlinks for the price of 50
• Why you can’t afford to skip guest posting 
• Why HA sites matter (and what to do about it)

Pain point solution subject lines

Solve your target customer’s pain points with subject lines like the ones below:

• Low domain authority score? We can help
• Boost your audience reach in three simple steps
• Tired of ill-performing blog posts?
• Your guest posting expert has arrived
• Save time on link building campaigns
• Low monthly readership? Not with this strategy 
• Need to connect with high-authority sites? We can help
• Trouble finding quality guest post writers? Not anymore
• No HA sites ready to link to? We can change that

Discount based subject lines

Who doesn’t love a good discount? Sweeten the pot by offering savings off your link building services with the following subject lines:

• Buy two months of link building services, get one month free
• 10 links for the price of three?!
• DR 75 backlinks for the price of DR 60
• 50% off on all link building packages
• Invest in link building, get a free support specialist! 
• Today only: 20% off all link building products and services 
• Get a free link building consultation when you sign up for our newsletter
• Refer a friend and get 30% off any package 
• BOGO deals on all services! Today only!

Results based subject lines

Use data and stats to show your target customer that your services deliver serious results:

• Find out how CrossTrain boosted its audience reach by 125%
• We helped Sour Apple’s blog grow to 300,000+ monthly readers 
• Birdie Mae success: 10k to 80k organic monthly visitors 
• Techmall saw improved rankings in just three months
• From off the map to 500,000 monthly readers
• 79 links in less than a month?! 
• How 24Bank went from off the map to 500,000 subscribers
• 12 companies that boosted traffic in less than 60 days

Question-based subject lines

Stir curiosity and provide valuable information with these question-based subject lines:

• What’s white hat link building?
• What makes a quality backlink? 
• How to acquire quality backlinks? 
• Why is link building important for SEO? 
• Ready to boost your domain authority?
• How do guest posts earn backlinks?
• Why are quality guest posts important?
• What makes an expert link builder?
• Is it important to hire a link builder?
• Is it important to hire a guest posting author?
• Should I hire a digital PR agency?
• What is anchor text?
• Why does anchor text matter?
• 10 anchor text do’s and don’ts
• Is link building relevant to my industry?
• When should I see results from my outreach efforts?

Benefits-based subject lines

Show your audience what’s in it for them with subject lines like the ones below:

• We only target high domain authority sites that produce results.
• Focus on your business, we'll take care of the links 
• Never worry about increasing organic traffic again 
• Not a link building specialist? We've got your back 
• Land top-tier backlinks in days 
• Never guess your link building strategy again
• Put an end to low-quality link building
• Earn normally unreachable backlinks in days
• No link building experience? No problem!
• Five ways to gain more backlinks 
• Unclear what link building is? Here’s the story in a nutshel

Note that the better your email's subject line fits in the scope of interest of your buyer persona, the higher open rate you'll get at the end of your campaign. 

7. Test your subject lines 

After you’ve brainstormed and created plenty of link building outreach subject line options, run A/B testing campaigns to discover which lines perform best.

You can also send out surveys and questionnaires, hire a focus group, or ask an experienced  virtual assistant to handle testing for you.

8. Create, finalize, and automate your campaigns 

Once you have a feel for the subject lines that perform best, start creating, finalizing, and automating your outreach campaigns. 

Segment your campaigns by prospect type and schedule them to send automatically.

There's a caveat here, though.

While automating your campaigns is essential to streamlining your outreach processes, it’s vital to stay armed and ready to respond to and nurture prospects when you get a reply from them.

In other words, make sure you know how to continue the conversation effectively so you can nudge your prospect closer to the finish line — otherwise known as conversion.

And that brings us to …

9. Create follow-up sequences 

Keep the outreach momentum going by staying in touch with prospects, even if they haven’t said yes to you or responded to any of your emails.

Speed up the process by using tools like follow-up email templates and an AI-powered sales outreach platform.

When creating your follow-up sequences, segment your customers by pain point, need, or other pertinent information, such as:

• Time of last follow-up
• Core solution you’re presenting
• Industry 
• Business size
• Sales revenue 
• Competitor score

Continue building a relationship with the prospect over time until they become your customer. If you discover the target customer isn’t a good fit for your brand, consider removing them from your outreach list or spacing out your follow-up emails in case their needs change.

Wrap up 

Email marketing software is a pivotal tool in your outreach arsenal. 

But that doesn’t mean that convincing your audience to open your emails comes easily.

With other brands on the hunt for your target customer’s attention, knowing how to stand out among the rest is crucial. While fool-proof strategies don’t exist, there are still best practices you can use to get one step closer to converting your prospects. 

And that’s why taking the time to thoroughly plan your link building outreach subject lines is so important.

If you’re ready to get your foot in the door quicker, we hope today’s article has inspired you to create email subject lines that convert.

That’s it for today, friends.

To your campaign’s success

Author Bio:

Joanne Camarce grows and strategizes B2B marketing and PR efforts. She loves slaying outreach campaigns and connecting with brands like G2, Wordstream, Process Street, and others. When she's not wearing her marketing hat, you'll find Joanne admiring Japanese music and art or just being a dog mom.