Are you committed to breaking through with your sales and marketing material? I’m sure that’s a ‘Yes’! Do you take the time to brainstorm perfect headlines that will appeal to your ideal customers? It’s amazing how many business owners have never even considered the importance of perfecting their sales email subject headlines.
Your customers are incredibly busy. Many of them will already be receiving 80 to 100 or more emails each day. You need to give them a compelling to choose to open your email, out of all the others in their inbox which are screaming at them for attention.
A good email subject headline can make the difference between your sales and marketing campaigns flying or frying. That’s because the true of a successful email campaign is sales results – which often start with your customer clicking through into the email.
The ideal headline grabs attention and piques customer interest enough to get them to click into the email and start reading. You need to tell them what’s inside without telling them everything that’s inside. In other words – keep them curious enough to click through by not giving away everything.
Think carefully about your target market. What are the pain points that your product or service will solve for them? Your email subject headline should act like a hook to draw them into your sales process.
Keep your email subject headline short and sweet. As Albert Einstein said – ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough’. Opinion varies as to the optimal number of characters – it could be less than 50 characters, or as many as 65 characters. Here at Magnify, we like to aim for 4 to 6 words for our email subject headlines. We want to catch the reader’s attention and draw them into reading our email.
Here’s a great list from HubSpot, outlining several ways to perfect your email subject headlines. One point they raise is to personalise your emails subject headlines. This can work beautifully. Or it can backfire if you’re writing subject headlines for a more conservative audience who prefer a little more formality. Knowing your audience and writing the email subject headline in a voice that resonates with them will give your campaign the best chance of customer engagement.
To achieve true customer engagement, you also need a call to action in your sales email. Is there an offer with a deadline? If so – tell your customers. Creating a sense of urgency, while demonstrating the value of your offering is a sure way to bring in the sales. And yes, if your email is well-written and sent to the right people, they will write back to you!
It’s often a good idea to brainstorm with your sales team, and to have a selection of email subject headlines. Try them out, in different situations, to determine which headlines work (and to remove any that don’t!). If you send some emails with a headline that has little or no engagement, the good news is that at least you know what doesn’t work. The great news is that you can perfect your subject headline and send them another email next quarter, and probably achieve more customer click-throughs as a result.
Journalists have excellent headline writing skills. Check out this headline from SmartCompany, which really grabs the reader’s attention. It’s just a fraction longer than recommended, but the hook is so good that it doesn’t seem to matter.
Remember the reason you’re writing email subject headlines – to connect with your ideal customer, and draw them into the sales process with you.
How well are your email subject headlines breaking through into sales for your business?