Your subject line will make or break your return on investment when it comes to email marketing. It is meant to grab their attention immediately. Your subject line has a critical function in any email campaign.
I’m going to suggest six headlines that I have found to have work for me in the past and likely to work for you as well. Like death and taxes, the one think that is constant with technology is that it always changes but one thing that will not change is people’s desire to succeed and their curiosity.
So that being said, what your subject line needs to do is to promise them that what you’re offering them will help them succeed in whatever it is that you are offering and it has to raise their curiosity about what you are offering.
1. Promote Your URL Here - Free!
This one has always been very successful for me when promoting a product or service that will help the prospects to promote their websites. I may use this headline to promote free classified sites, traffic builder sites, or other sites that promise to help you promote your site.
2. Hi, My name is Bert
This works simply because it raises prospects curiosity. I personally always fall for this kind of opening because I want to know who this guy Bert is. Who is this Bert guy anyway?
3. I need your help, please?
People always want to help others. It’s human nature. If your subject line ask for help in some way, people are quite likely to open your email because it feeds on their need to want to help someone in distress.
4. Joe, I’m still waiting for your shipping address.
What shipping address? What’s he talking about? What’s he shipping to me? I don’t recall ordering anything from this guy. Of course you only want to use a subject line like this if you really want the person’s mailing or shipping address. For example you may have a postcard mailing campaign going on and you’re looking at building a mailing list for it. Remember to remain ethical and honest with your subject line.
5. How my site got in the top 10 ranking on Google, for free!
This one will get anyone that is remotely interested in getting a high search ranking to open the email in a split second. It raises the prospect curiosity. What you got on the front page of goggle’s search engine, I have to find out how you did that.
6. Jim, Please accept my apologies.
When I first saw an email coming in with this subject line, mu initial reaction was, “uh… what are sorry for? Who are you and what did you do that you need to apologize? So again it raises the curiosity level. It turned out that the sender was apologizing for not sending the email sooner to tell me about his great program. Oh well… it got me to open the email didn’t it.
So… naturally these six subject lines will not cover all emails that you want to send out but it gives you some good examples as to how they affect the human psyche. Your subject line has to be irresistible and has to immediately grab your prospects imagination. Another subject line I recently used to get members of a service organization I belong to open the email was “There’s been an accident!” The fact is that there was a bit of an accident, I “accidentally” deleted some pretty critical information on the organization’s website and I needed to communicate that to them. Believe me I got a 95% open rate on that email.
If you can mesmerize your readers with witty subject line you’re half way to making a sale; you can’t make a sale if you don’t make a sales pitch and you can’t make a sales pitch if you can’t get them to open your email. Also, always use your name in the email; people want to feel like they know you. In order to build a long term relationship don’t use fake names let them know who you are.
Of course, I am not recommending that you use any of these headlines if they are not true in relation to the content of the e-mail message. If you rely on deception in e-mail marketing, all you will do is tarnish your reputation and your credibility.
