Image Credit: BCG

I created a separate email address to receive all of the e-zines that I follow.  Why create a separate email address you ask?  Because I receive so many, I didn’t want to clog up by inbox with all of those emails.  Some days I just can’t get to all of them so they pile up for a day or two.  Imaging having to see hundreds of emails—that could be overwhelming!

The past few weeks have been particularly busy and I did not have the opportunity to read anything.  There were pages, and pages of emails so what did I do?  I scanned the titles and got rid of the ones that didn’t look too interesting.  Guess what?  Your subscribers do the same thing and that is why it is so important to have a great title.  I’m sure you’ve done the same thing.  You are looking at your emails, scan the titles and say to yourself, that doesn’t look very interesting or that doesn’t look like anything I would be interested in, so you delete it.  Now your content may be important and relevant to your subscribers, but if the title is mediocre, it will go to the trash.

Make sure you have a title that is going to really catch their attention, grab their eye, make them say, I need to read that!  So how can you make this happen?

1. Have your emails from {your name}, not your company name.  Your personal name is more intimate, more personable.  Seeing an email from a company usually has a sales connotation; they are less inclined to delete an email from Sally Jones than ABC Company.
2. Keep your titles short.  The shorter the better.  Short titles also help in the deliverability of your email.
3. Ask.  What better way to find out what your readers need than to ask them?  Send a short (keyword short) survey to your email list and ask them what struggles and challenges they have and write on those topics.  This is also a great way to use social media.  You can create a poll in Facebook and receive answers there as well!
4. Send it later in the day. After I have gotten ready in the morning, I do a quick scan of my inbox.  If the titles don’t grab me, to the trash they go.  I do this so that when I am ready to sit and read emails, I don’t have as many to go through; it’s a sort of screening process for me.  The emails sent later in the day don’t go through that process because I am ready and prepared for the day.

Take the time to come up with topics that you would like to write about and think about the titles.  Put yourself in your reader’s shoes.  If you saw the title, would you keep it in your inbox or would it fall victim to the delete button?

LynnWhite