What Makes a Good Email Header

Does your Substack header need a tweak?

Hi, happy Friday!

I hope you’ve had a great week.

Today I thought I’d share some quick thoughts on email headers.

Email headers are important because they give your email context, so people who aren’t familiar with your work, or don’t remember subscribing, know who you are and why you are in their inbox.

A good header includes at least one sentence saying what your newsletter is about, but in Substack, headers can be quite long.

Take Cosmographia’s header, for example. It has four paragraphs. In the first paragraph, it’s writer introduces themself and welcomes the reader:

“Hi, M.E. Rothwell here. As always, thanks for letting me into your inbox. If you’re a new subscriber, welcome!”

The first paragraph also explains the purpose and subject matter of the newsletter, saying Comsographia will take you to a faraway place and unveil its history and culture.

The second paragraph prompts readers to become paying subscribers by explaining the benefits they will get; access to meticulously curated travel guides. And it encourages readers to refer the newsletter to their friends to gain access for free.

The third paragraph is a call to action: Upgrade to paid.

The fourth paragraph is an invitation to join the writer on Substack Notes, where readers are promised short snippets of the publication and told what Notes is like (“early days Twitter, but nice.”)

That’s a lot of great information for readers, right at the top of the email, and Substack adds it automatically to every email, without the writer having to do anything.

With a header like this, subscribers to Cosmographia will never be in any doubt about what it is all about, or why it is in their inbox. Plus they know what paying subscribers get and how to get those benefits for free. Brilliant!

What’s your header like?

As a writer, you might never see your own email header, since it doesn’t appear in the post editing window. Do you even know what’s in your header right now? Could it benefit from a makeover, to add context for new subscribers and occasional readers?

To edit your email header, go to

Publication dashboard > Settings > Publication details > Email banner, header and footer settings > Edit (button)

That’s it for this week, have a lovely weekend.

Karen