Hey, hey! Liz Wilcox here, and you’re hanging at the virtual watercooler for another episode of The Email Sound Booth—specifically, the only podcast episode where we deep-dive into whether using capital letters in your subject lines is a yay or nay. (Spoiler: I have opinions, and they’re backed by a little something called “Liz’s personal inbox.”)
If you’re a regular around here, first of all—thank you! (And show your girl some love with a review, even if you think I ramble more than a group chat after midnight.)
Episode TL;DR:
This episode is for all you biz besties who want their emails to pop in the inbox—without looking like a shouty spam bot or, worse, slipping into the graveyard of unopened messages. I fire up my own Outlook (messy, mildly embarrassing, hopefully relatable), and walk you through exactly what kind of subject lines get my attention…and which ones scream “delete me please.”
Let’s Break It Down:
- Capital Letters or Nah?I’m Team Lowercase. In my inbox, all those capitalized, “Title Case” subject lines blend right into the sea of spam and autofiltered nonsense. But a simple, lowercase subject? It jumps out. Just one word, no caps—boom, instantly visible.
- But Don’t Take My Word For It—Experiment!If you love your capital letters (maybe you were the kid who aced handwriting practice), go for it! Make it YOU. But if you’re itching to get a few more opens, try swapping to lowercase—just for a hot minute. Your people might surprise you.
- Proof from My Inbox:Spam = usually “type case” (that’s every first letter capitalized). Real, interesting humans? Lots more lowercase happening—and it stands out.
- Honest Biz Chat:This isn’t about some rigid “only lowercase emails convert” rule. It’s about zigging when everyone else zags, finding what fits your vibe, and being bold enough to test something new.
Quick Win Actions for Your Next Send:
- Try writing a single-word, all lowercase subject line.
- Review your inbox—what stands out to you?
- Don’t be afraid to mix it up and see what happens!
You’re the best. If you learned something new, drop me a line or leave a review. And remember: you don’t need to yell (with caps) to get noticed—sometimes the quietest emails get the most love.
Catch you next time!
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Transcript
What’s up? What’s up? Liz Wilcox, here. You are listening to episode 128 of the Email Sound Booth Podcast. Lucky, lucky me. Thank you so much for listening. If you are one of our daily listeners, I’d love for you to leave a review. It would just make my day to hear from you and to know that you’re listening. It doesn’t have to be five stars because I don’t, I don’t know if this podcast is five stars. I think the content’s good, but sometimes I ramble. I don’t know. I would love your honest opinion.
Anyway, speaking of rambling, let’s get back, let’s talk really quick. This should be a quick episode. And if you’re not watching on YouTube, I highly recommend checking out YouTube because I’m going to share my screen. But, you know, I’ll walk you along through it if you don’t have YouTube or whatever.
So, should my emails—should my subject line—should I use capital letters? I think the answer is no, but it is really: what is your personality? Okay, but I will share my screen and I want to show you why I think the answer is no. So this is my—I’m showing my personal email, my Outlook account right now, and I want to show you something.
So, the first two emails that you’re seeing are, you know, no—well, the first three are like some ‘no replies’ and this renewal by Anderson, which—we click on it—oh, wow. This is spam, right? This is very clearly spam. Shout out Outlook. Microsoft used to be way better at filtering spam. Now you suck at it.
And if we just kind of scroll through here, we can see that we, you know, we got a lot of spam here, right? We got a lot of spam. And look at what the spam does. They use type case. So type case is where they capitalize every first letter of the word, right? Buy one, get one. B, O, G, O are capitalized, right? You can see payment confirmation for my lease. Right? That’s all type case. My school bucks, low balance. So apparently Chelsea needs more lunch money. All type case.
Then we see this something. It says Z. Quiet. The first anti snoring solution. The subject line uses some capital letters. There’s a typo in there. The preview text sucks. Like that is—we can click on it. We don’t even have to click on it to know that that’s spam, right?
But then like, look, if we scroll, scroll, scroll. Oh, here’s Liz Wilcox. I’m using, you know, one subject, one word, subject line. And it’s lowercase, right? Why? Because it stands out. In the inbox I see all this typecast or type case, all these long subject lines. You know, black river camper forms due May 1, City of Fort Walton beach, paperless registration, recurring payment around reminder. Then you see Liz Wilcox and you see Pete McPherson, the co-owner of Listgadget.com, by the way—look it up if you haven’t yet. Pete’s Roundup. Now, he uses some brackets and he uses type case, but it’s super, super short. I’m using lowercase. Just one word. Again, super, super short.
So these subject lines stand out, right? So I see them kind of first where I’m like, oh, the rest—this is, you know, this is garbage, right? And then I can very easily sort through the garbage, right? I can just look at it and know like, oh, that’s garbage.
So should you use capital letters? You totally, totally can. If it’s in your practice. If it’s—now I sound like a yoga teacher, right? If it’s in your practice, if it’s in your personality. You just can’t get over the lowercase thing, go ahead. But do know that if you’re willing to experiment, you might see some higher open rates.
For example, carly@thehabit.net—that’s my Ayurveda lady. I’m doing a detox with her. You can see she’s using some, you know, just capital letter for the first word. She does it down here. You know, subject line: We can do anything for 10 days. She capitalizes “We.” But you see how—let’s look at—and let me, again, if you’re not watching on YouTube, I’m zooming in here. And we can see Carly’s email. “We can do anything for 10 days.” Then you see Liz Wilcox’s “walking billboard.” Again, no capital letters. Then you see something from the United States Postal Service—you know, your Daily Digest, type case. You see Airbnb, type case. Then you see some spam, type case.
You see, the only one that really stands out is Liz Wilcox’s because there’s no capital letters. So maybe if Carly had no capital letters, I would see hers faster. It’s just the way the brain works. We’re searching for something different. That’s where our eyes want to land. And so that’s why I don’t use capital letters at all.
But should you? I don’t know, I would say experiment with it. Have some fun. Don’t be afraid to try something new. You just might be pleasantly surprised.
All right. I’m Liz Wilcox. As always, you are awesome. If you want to learn more about email marketing and get more fun little tips like this, I’d love for you to join Email Marketing Membership if you’re not already there. It’s $9 a month where I write the weekly newsletters for you. So the content is good so that people want to open over and over and over again, no matter how you use the subject lines. And of course, every week I give you three or four subject lines anyway so you can play around, see which one fits your audience.
All right, I will see you on the next episode, my friend.
