Boost open rates with inspiration from top 10+ valentine email subject lines

This was revealed by Everlytic’s analysis of the most effective valentine email subject lines sent through its platform during the past three years.

As South Africa’s largest digital messaging platform, Everlytic knows subject lines play an essential role in ensuring emails stand out in crowded inboxes and achieve high open rates.

In a bid to give marketers inspiration for creating successful mailers during the month of love, the company set out to discover the best-performing valentine email subject lines.

A total of 3,015 valentine-related emails were sent through Everlytic’s platform by 173 businesses between January 2021 and December 2023. These emails included both internal and external communication.

For the analysis, the dataset was narrowed to emails sent to 100 recipients or more, with open rates the same as or higher than 2022’s average open rate of 29.28%, as determined by Everlytic’s latest Email Marketing Benchmarks Report. Non-valentine-related subject lines, duplicates of the same or very similar subject lines, and symbols or emojis were excluded.

Unsurprisingly, the words “Valentine’s Day”, “valentine”, “love”, and “loved one” were dominant in the top-performing mailers. The email with the highest open rate of 99.82% was an internal communication in the medical and healthcare industry with the subject line, “Love is all around”.

Many of the emails with the highest open rates had subject lines that simply wished their recipients “Happy Valentine’s Day”, which shows a to-the-point, non-salesy approach worked well. The email with this subject line that performed best had an open rate of 81.2%. It’s interesting that despite the large number of email subject lines with this phrase, many of these emails received high open rates. This could indicate recipients appreciate the well wishes for this holiday.

The content of other successful email subject lines indicated exclusive or good deals, challenges or opportunities to participate, how to spoil or be spoilt, and chances to win. Examples include, “All you need is love, but a mystery discount doesn’t hurt either” and “Work up a Sweat this Valentine’s Day! Shop Tracksuits Now!”.

Some subject lines were poetic, like, “Roses are red, [Name of Company] is blue. It’s Valentine’s day, we love you!”; “Let your love and garden grow”; and “Fizz, flowers and kisses, [Insert Name of Email Recipient]!”

Personalisation was a key feature with some subject lines using the email recipient’s name and others using the company or product name.

There were many instances where clichés or quirky sayings about love were used to call on recipients to take action. One subject line read, “Write us a love letter”, to ask subscribers for reviews.

Nurturing themes of encouraging self-care – “Fall in love with YOU this February” and adding value to the email recipients’ lives instead of pushing products – “Let us show you some love” – came through strongly too.

Some emails shared freebies with their contacts, for example, “5 recipes for a cringe-free Valentine’s Day” and “Here’s a bazillion chocolate recipes because we love you”.

Interestingly, while it’s considered best practice to use title case for subject lines, not all the successful valentine email subject lines followed this rule.

Here are the top 10 valentine email subject lines as they appeared – excluding emojis and symbols:

1. Love is all around
2. Win this Valentine’s day with [Insert Name of Company]
3. Happy Valentine’s Day
4. Roses are red, [Name of Company] is blue. It’s Valentine’s day, we love you!
5. Valentines Origami Challenge
6. [Insert Name of Artist] Valentine’s Day Show – ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW
7. And the Valentines’ winner is
8. Share your [Insert Name of Company] ‘Love’ Story & WIN!
9. Spoil your special loved one this Valentine’s Day xoxo
10. Attention all teams: Enter our Valentine’s Day showcase today!

Find a further 15 best-performing valentine subject lines, plus a list of Everlytic’s favourites, on www.everlytic.com.