How many email messages do you receive a day? Do you read them all?
The average person is hit with nearly 300 commercial advertising messages per day. Three Hundred! Billboards, bus signs, taxi cab banners, television advertisements, radio advertisements, magazines ads, newspaper ads, direct mail...
Then they check their email.
The first thing they see and in most cases the only thing they see (if your message has gotten past their filters) is your subject caption. Is it compelling? Does it say who, what, when, where, how, why now? Does it remind your subscriber why they signed up for your messages? Does it convince them to actually open and read it?
I don't' want to say for certain that it doesn't - but chances are, many of your emails are being deleted without even being opened.
If you want your target audience to take action on your email message, that is open it and read it, you'd better have a compelling reason why that action must take place NOW.
A compelling subject line is KEY.
But you have to remember that the person you're sending the email to has permissibly signed up and volunteered to receive your newsletter, eCourse, or whatever other free info you're sending them. Treat them accordingly. You need to keep in mind that your FIRST message to them needs to be very personal.
The subject line should always have their first name written in it. And make sure to describe what they signed up for in as short and descriptive of a sentence as you can. They're interested in what they signed up for - not the product that they may eventually buy from you in the future.
Give a gentle, short reminder of how important and worthwhile your message will be for them to read. Once they reach the body of your email copy, they'll remember exactly why they signed up. But it's difficult sometimes to actually make sure your message will be opened. Writing a compelling Subject Headline is an art, and it takes practice and constant testing. It's OK to experiment. But if you do change formats, stick with it for a while - don't change with each message.
Be it a new technology that will save them time or a process that will reduce their loss of money, or what have you, your subject line must to be timely, and it must be believable and you must spell out it's urgency and it's reason, it's purpose, and it's answer to "why in your subject caption".
Most of all it must be believable.
I know I keep harping the importance of trust and building a relationship with your subscribers, and you're probably thinking "Yeah, yeah...I got it! I understand. Now quit reminding me." This is such an important aspect of email marketing that I want to make sure you have it written on every wall of your memory bank. Yes, every wall...heck, you should probably write it out on every corner, crevice and inch of your memory. ;-)
But making your subject line "believable" is not the end. You have to come through with your promise. If once they open your message and realize it doesn't hold true to your subject line, they'll quickly send it to the "Trash Can". And your subsequent emails will all be deleted as well.
This is where many marketers stumble.
It's the believable part and fulfilling the promise that many marketers stumble on because they fail to tie together the real, the now, and the why into the two seconds they are allotted before the reader hits the delete key.
Writing a compelling headline. It's nothing new. All of us have heard of it's importance again and again, but few of us has heeded the call. I know this to be true, because I delete thousands of pieces of email every day and millions of others do the same. You most likely do it also.
How do you make your message compelling?
Always compose your subject caption with this in mind. People will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Like a good story, the first paragraph should entice you to read the second paragraph, and the second paragraph should entice you to read the third paragraph, and so on and so on and so on.
But it all starts with your email subject line. As stated in an earlier post I believe every action you take in your marketing approach should motivate the reader to take another action, which takes them deeper into your sales process.
What has developed is that the same compelling reason must resonate throughout your marketing promotion to keep the reader involved until they take your final most desired action, buy your product or service.
That's pretty much why we all do what we do. But the profit only comes when people honestly believe your product will benefit them - when they are informed and convinced. In this medium they are informed and convinced by trusting what you have told them, and they will only read what you write when it grabs their attention at first glance. You can grab their attention with flash and glitz, with shock and awe, or with a compelling subject headline.
Establish an undeniable reason in that short 2 second period so that the reader will take your most desired action, opening your message and reading it.
Best of luck!
About the Author
If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more email marketing sure-fire strategies for FREE, visit http://www.InstantPopOver.com and sign up for my FREE eCourse "7 Days To Building a Booming Email List" right now!