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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.

The very best subject lines are the ones that make a recipient feel that if they don’t open and read the email they will be missing something vital. They should feel like that if they don’t open and read an email message from you that they will be missing out on something really important and may even be ‘out-of-the-loop’.

Curiosity is a strong and powerful human trait that email marketers need to use to make their marketing emails pass the ‘must-open, must-read’ test.

The other very human trait that affiliate marketers need to understand and use is ‘me’. The recipients of marketing emails that you send want you to answer one very important question. That question is the age old, ‘What’s in it for me?” The key word is ‘me’.

Let’s say that you are marketing tax software. What kind of subject line would you write?

“Don’t miss out! We are getting down to the buisness of tax. Learn how to save money on your taxes today. A special $10 offer is included.”

Yuck! That is a terrible subject line.

The first thing that is wrong with it is that it is vague. The second thing that is wrong with it is that it doesn’t clearly state what the email marketing message is. The third thing that is wrong with it is that it doesn’t tease the recipient. The fourth thing that is wrong with it is that the word business is misspelled. The fifth thing that is wrong with it is that it is far too long even though it is well under the 50 word limit.

Result: That subject line would quickly get the email deleted rather than opened and read!

So what would be a good subject line, you ask?

“Tax Relief and a $10 special offer!”

I don’t know about you, but I’d open one that promised me some tax relief and a bonus to boot!

The first reason that this subject line is good is because the very first word is an attention-getter. Everybody is concerned about taxes. The second reason that it is so good is that it is aimed directly at the recipient. The third reason it is so good is that it makes an offer of something for nothing. The fouth reason it is to good is because it is short. Short is a very good thing.

You have 50 words you can use in your subject line but the ones that come after the 25th one are mostly useless.

Examples of good subject lines are ones that are:

1. Brief….and the shorter the better.
2. Direct. Use the most important word first.
3. Ask a question that the reader wants to know the answer to.
4. Have a tease quality. Remember ‘curiosity’ is a common human trait.
5. Tie into current events. In the example above, the email would tie into tax season.

It is common practice to stick a subject line on a marketing email almost as an after thought. The best practice is to start with a subject line that will meet all of the above listed requirements.

It is important to recognize and accept the fact that most of those who recieve your marketing emails and actually open them are not going to READ them. They will not read them word for word at any rate. They will scan them. They will read only enough words to get the idea of what is being sold at first.

IF (and ‘if’ is a very big word) you can convince them when they scan your marketing email message that they might be interested in what you are selling, then, and only then, will the really read everything that you have written.

Keep your marketing email short.

To the chagrin of email marketers, the attention span of the average computer user is extremely short. We have become an imatient nation. We want instant gratification as well as instant information. We do not want to bored with a lot of tediousness.

Back years and years ago there was a radio program, Dragnet, that even made it to the TV screens of Americn for awhile. The main character was Sgt. Joe Friday. One of his famous lines was, “Just the facts, ma’m. Just give us the facts.”

This should be your mantra as you compose the body of a marketing email. “Just the facts!” Each one should be stated as succinctly as possible and they should be bulleted.

All sentences should be short, simple sentences.

Do not use run-on sentences that present more than one idea. The paragraphs should also be very short. One sentence paragraphs are fine. Two sentence paragraphs are about the maximum.

Avoid the use of all capital letters.

All capital letters are the email equivalant of real world shouting or yelling and nobody likes to be yelled at. Not only is it rude, it is ineffective. You’ve no doubt seen televsion commercials that are made by the owners of the businesses being advertised. You know the ones….’Honest Joe’s Used Car Lot’. Honest Joe seems to think that if he yells loud enough, somebody will believe him.

It is fair to compare marketing email messages that have a lot of sentences that are all capital letters to an ‘Honest Joe’ television commericial. They are equally rude and equally ineffective. The one gets muted and the other gets deleted.

Go easy on the exclamation marks.

One exclamation mark says that the sentence is emphatic. The use of several at the end of a sentence either means the sender hit the key too many times or he is yelling at the recipient. Neither is good.

A single exclamation point is a good thing. It indicates that an important point is being made in the preceeding sentence. The use of many exclamation points negates the value of one exclamation point. Many exclamation points do not make the preceeding statement more emphatic. They actually make is less emphatic.

Use bullet points.

Bulleted points make it easy for the recipients of your marketing email to pick out important facts. Remember that short attention span? They will look at the bulleted points and then decide whether to read the rest of your message.

Spelling and grammar useage counts!

Check it carefully and remember not to stake your reputation on your spell check program.