The open rate of your email message is nearly 100% dependent upon your subject line. Your potential customers typically spend less than two seconds deciding if they want to read your message. Which means that you have to use compelling subject lines to be a successful email marketer.
Here are 12 tips for creating better subject lines:
1. Communicate fast, just like on an outer envelope. Use 40- 50 characters or less.
2. Mention your primary benefit in the subject line. You must motivate the reader to read your note now.
3. Build your subject line around your desired action. If you're selling a webinar, include date/subject/registration in subject line. If you're selling product, include price savings in the subject line.
4. Write your subject lines first, then create your email marketing message to complement the subject line. The number one mistake of most email marketers is a last-minute subject line.
5. Only use personalization in subject line if you already have a business relationship with the recipients of your email message.
6. Give urgent reason to act now. Examples include "order by x date", "offer ends tomorrow at 6 pm", "registration deadline is today".
7. Be specific. Use phrase such as "Get up to 80% off" rather than "Save money".
8. You can use the word "free" with caution by following these guidelines:
* Don't make "free" the first word in your subject line.
* Don't use exclamation point such as Free!
* Don't spell out FREE in all caps
9. If use the word "complimentary" instead of "free", make sure it's spelled correctly. Many email marketers incorrectly use the word "complementary", which has a completely different meaning.
10. Test your subject lines continuously to find the winner for you. Make sure to send each version of subject line to at least 5000 email addresses.
11. Look at newspaper headlines and magazine covers for ideas on how to express ideas quickly with great appeal.
12. Use software to check the spam score of your subject line and body copy prior to sending email message. Then make changes as needed.
Contactology has free software tool which allows you to quickly determine a message's quality and deliverability.
Learn more about creating more effective email subject lines from these sources:
*
Email Marketing Resources from Lyris *
3 Ways to Write Better Subject Lines*
"All About Creative" book from Direc MarketingIQ
The RainToday blog recently featured an article from Andrew Sobel, a leading authority on client relationships and the skills and strategies required to earn lifelong client loyalty. Andrew's article "Where Independent Professionals Succeed and Large Firms Fail" explains the reasons why marketing consultants and service professionals from small companies typically outperform their counterparts from large companies.
Sobel's traits of successful independent professsionals include:
1. Create personal brands by building individual market renown.
2. Regularly develop and disseminate intellectual capital.
3. Focus on conversations, not PowerPoint.
4. Try to achieve success, not perfection.
5. Have learned to eliminate non-value added activities.
6. Take responsibility for their personal development.
7. Organize around clients.
8. Truly act like it's their money.
I'll add the following traits of successful service providers such as mailing list brokers, advertising agencies, and financial advisors:
1. Speedy response to client inquiries and questions -- the faster the better.
2. Lifetime commitment to customers -- the same staff works with same clients for several years.
3. Responsibile for actions -- no hiding behind "company policy" or anonymous "others at the company."
4. Tech savvy -- expert at using the latest technology for research, and to present and share ideas.
Valentines Day was yesterday. Did you forget to do something for someone?
It's ok. The phrase "better late than never" applies to lots of things in life. Especially new projects for your business.
If you're like me, then you have a few projects that you wanted to do at the begining of January which are still incomplete. Do them now.
In the long run, nobody will remember that your start date for a new program or service was February 16 rather than January 2.
I've always thought of the clock as my number one competitor. Yet for many years my top "time wasting" activity is reading emails that lead me bouncing from one website to another.
Lately I've been saving 20 minutes a day by taking a more efficient approach to reading email. I created a "ToDoLater" subfolder for my Outlook Inbox. Then, when an incoming email note may contain something interesting -- but not relevant to the projects I'm working on now -- I just move it to the "ToDoLater" folder.
Later, at end of day, or whenever I have a few minutes of free time, I take a quick look through the emails in my "ToDoLater" folder. Instead of veering off into dozens of non-essential websites several times a day, now I limit that type of activity to a focused five-minute segment.
It's easy to set up and use subfolders in Outlook.
How To Create Subfolder:
1. Right-click on your Inbox and select "New Folder".
2. In the "Name:" field, type the name you want to call your new subfolder.
3. In the "Folder Contains:" field, make sure it says "Mail & Post Items".
4. In the "Select where to place the folder:" field, select "Inbox".
5. Click OK.
6. Look in the Folder List to see your new folder.
7. If the folder is not displayed, click the + symbol beside the Inbox to expand the list of subfolders.
How To Transfer Mail to Subfolder:
1. In your Inbox, select the message you want to transfer.
2. Click, hold, and drag that message to the folder in your Folder List.
3. If the folder is not displayed, click the + symbol beside the Inbox to expand the list of subfolders.
The best ways to grow your business during tough economy, according to
Deliver Magazine's excerpt of the new book
"Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence", by Philip Kotler and John Casilone are:
1. First priority is to make sure that your top customers are getting proper attention and are happy with your service.
2. Push aggressively for greater market share. Since many companies have cut their marketing budgets, this is your best chance for making competitive gains.
3. Research your customers now more than ever to keep updated on their changing marketing strategies.
4. Maintain or increase your marketing budget to attract more new customers with your use of targeted mailing lists, email lists, and internet marketing campaigns.
5. Communicate with your customers that continuing to do business with you is their safest course of action.
6. Don't discount pricing on your best products and services. Instead, find ways to provide free additional services which complement your best products.
7. Save the strong; lose the weak. Focus your time and money on promoting your strongest products and services, and ignore your weakest performers.
We've all heard the phrase "work smarter, not harder". Thanks to an idea I read in the book "
The 4-Hour Workweek", I've discovered a simple way to recapture an hour or more of productive time each day.
I realized that email messages are the biggest interruption in my work day and can often lead to spur-of-the-moment wasted time reading, thinking or browsing based upon something in the email note. One year ago I made 3 changes to my Outlook settings:
1.
Eliminated the message reading pane 2. Turned off
New Message Desktop Alerts.
2. Increased the
interval at which Outlook provided me with new email messages. For many years, I had Outlook check for new email messages every 5 minutes. I first increased the message checking interval to 15 minutes, then later bumped that up to 20 minutes.
The results:
* No decrease in service provided to clients. I'm still able to respond quickly to all clients. The reality is that if someone wants an immediate answer, they'll call. When communicating via email, an answer within 20-30 minutes is considered fast. On those rare cases where an instant response via email is critical, I just do a manual send/receive of email messages.
* I gain an extra 5 to 10 minutes of productivity every hour of each work day.
* I reduced my email interruptions from 96 times to 24 times per 8 hour workday.
Try it. I guarantee that it will work for you, too.
And if you want to keep pushing the idea of freeing yourself from your inbox, check out the ideas of Tim Farris in his blog's "
Email De-tox Category"