Reach More People From Your Computer by Avoiding What Everyone Else Does
by Ryan Faist
It seems too good to be true — an easy way to reach your target audience without the expense of postage and print materials. Don’t be fooled. Most email marketing goes straight from the inbox to the waste box.
The next time you check your email, notice how fast you delete your spam. Take a second and actually read the subject lines. Knowing why spam looks like spam is the key to avoiding the biggest mistake in email marketing.
First, burn this into your brain: the subject line is the most important part of your email. If you don’t know this, you’re doomed. You can send the most brilliantly designed email in the world, but if you’ve got a bad subject line… poof. All gone.
Let’s look at some bad ones: Find Your Soul Mate is quite popular. Do you think spammers are proud when they come up with this? Delete. How about this: Your Ticket to Financial Freedom. As it turns out, your ticket will cost you $499.99 plus shipping and handling. Delete.
Here’s a tip that will help distinguish your email marketing from the likes above: never be cute or clever. Have you seen the emails that try to trick you into thinking someone is replying to you? They look like RE: Save More on Car Insurance or FW: Make Thousands Without Leaving Your Home. Do the people who write these subject lines think they’re fooling anyone? Absolutely. That’s their biggest mistake.
Before you go crazy with email marketing, remember this: people know what you’re up to. No matter how you approach them, they know you want something; otherwise you wouldn’t be emailing them.
To make matters worse, people expect to be inundated with spam. They know they’ll have to trash hordes of junk mail every day, so they’ve subconsciously programmed their minds to immediately delete anything that resembles spam. And since only spammers write subject lines that are cute or clever, guess which emails get deleted most often.
So what’s the secret to writing subject lines that people want to open? The answer is something you probably learned when you were five years old.
Be honest. If you’re sending an e-letter, say so. If you’re sending an e-coupon for a fitness center, don’t try to disguise it with a subject line that reads Your Answer to Total Fitness. It won’t work. Free Three Month Fitness Trial will get more opens. Why? When it comes to email subject lines, people are attracted to straightforward honesty. It’s just the way it is. Direct subject lines will always yield more opens than cute ones.
Tags: E-Letters, Email Marketing, Newsletters, Writing