6 Steps To The Perfect Subject Line
When writing you email subject line, follow these steps to help you create a powerful, attention grabbing headline:
Technique #1: Prepare to compete.
The first and most important piece of information that you need to have permanently implanted in your brain is that you are not sending email to email addresses. You are sending email to real, live human beings.
These humans that will receive your email are much like yourself. They all are busy people who weren’t sitting there with baited breath waiting for your marketing email message to arrive in their empty inboxes.
No. Their inboxes overflow at the same rate that yours does. If you want them to open and read your marketing email, your subject line is going to have to complete with dozens or even hundreds of other emails for their attention.
Technique #2: Answer the ‘what’s in it for me’ question.
You’ve got 50 words, tops, to answer that question. You must give the recipients of your marketing emails a very good and substantial reason for taking their valuable time to see what it is that you have to say to them in your marketing email.
Think about suject lines that get your attention. All of the subject lines that grab your attention and entice you to open an email are the ones that promise to help you in some way. They answer the quesion, ‘what’s in it for me’ and they do it in the 50 subject line words.
Technique #3: Don’t promise more than you can deliver.
Don’t be overly zealous in your subject line. You can’t deliver world peace, so don’t make a promise that you can’t keep. Keep it real. Keep it on point.
Technique #4: Study newspaper headlines.
Newspapers have headline writing down to a fine art. Pick up your local newspaper and note how headlines are written. Pay attention to the ones that grab your attention.
You will note that all newspaper headlines state the most important point of the topic and do so in the fewest possible words. A newspaper headline and the subject line of your marketing emails are kissing cousins. The object of your marketing email is to state the content of your email in the fewest possible words and hit the most important part of the information that your email provides.
Technique #5: Don’t practice recycling.
That may not sound very enviornmentaly friendly but we aren’t talking about plastics or paper; we are talking about marketing email subject lines.
Just because a subject line that you used last month was effective, it doesn’t mean that you can simply change a word or two and recycle it.
Language is a fluid…it is not a solid. The buzz words that were hot last month are this month’s flat liners. Keep your subject lines fresh.
Technique #6: Test! Test! Test!
The way to always outdo your competition is to take the time and put forth the added effort to test your subject lines.
It will serve you well when you begin an email marketing campaign to add an additional day or so to your time table that will allow you to test your subject lines for effectiveness.
Send two or three variations of your subject line to selected members of your opt-in list. Long onto your auto responder account and see which ones have the best open rate.