There are really two 1st 7 seconds for emails, and Relevance Marketing can help with both – getting your recipients to open the email in the first place, and causing them to want to read the message once they open it. Both are equally important, but if they don’t open the email, you could be giving away dollar bills for a nickel a piece inside and you’ll have no takers.
You Have 2-3 Seconds at Most on the Subject Line
A 7 second consideration is too much to hope for with a subject line. You must instantly capture your prospects’ interest with your subject line. I receive over a hundred emails a day, with gusts up above 200. I read perhaps 10-15% of them. Of course I read all emails from clients, business associates, and friends – although sometimes I open friends’ emails later in the day.
Of the rest, I only open the very few that REALLY arouse my curiosity or capture my imagination in the subject line – they must instantly engage my brain in some way.
I say you must capture prospects’ interest, not attention. I could say something terribly outlandish in a subject line: “President meets with Martians.” I have your momentary attention, but how many people will open that email? Of course temporary interest is the best you can hope for, but all it needs to do is cause the recipients to open the email.
Here are some subject lines that most prospects will open:
Joan Smith Asked Me to Email You
How Dell Saved 7.3% on Labor Costs in 2010
3 Reasons why XYZ Co. is Like Google
How Do You Compete with Budweiser’s Ad Budget
We’ll analyze each of these in a moment but first…
Professional Marketers- This not just a Sales Issue. These examples are personal emails, but the concepts work with consideration for bulk emails. Also, you send single emails to clients, internal and maybe external, all the time. If you don’t read every email sent to you, who’s to say everyone reads your emails? Use these techniques for your own effectiveness as well, but please also prepare training materials/seminars for your sales staff to teach this to them.
Let’s take these examples one at a time:
Joan Smith Asked Me to Email You – In this case your prospects knows Joan Smith personally. Joan is a trusted friend. If Joan really is a friend, this subject line will always get your email opened, unless you are so odious to the receiver that he or she deletes the email and picks up the phone to berate Joan. If that’s the case, give the account to anyone else in your company.
When emailing to a list, Joan would not be a personal trusted friend of each recipient, but Joan could be a trusted name in the industry. You wouldn’t say Joan asked you to call unless Joan’s giving a product endorsement, but you might start the subject line, Joan Smith stated __________.
How Dell Saved 7.3% on Labor Costs in 2010 – The company mentioned doesn’t need to be as big as Dell Computer. In fact, it will be better if the company named is well known in the specific industry of the email recipients. Probably the subject line company shouldn’t be a direct competitor, but it could work in some cases if you’re careful. It will also be better if the named company is similar in size to your prospect, or perhaps the next step-up bigger. Another attention getting factor would be if the named company is well know for quality work, innovation, or recently turning around and becoming profitable – acclaim like that.
3 Reasons why XYZ Co. is Like Google – Use this if you have email blast software that allows you to insert the company name for each recipient in the subject line in place of XYZ Co. If you don’t, buy the software, insert each company name by hand one at a time, or don’t send out an email like this.
Again it would be best if you weren’t comparing the prospects’ companies to a direct competitor, (although that could work). You want a very admired company here, like Google, so the recipient will feel both curiosity and complimented. Warning – Deliver very quickly on the 3 reasons and make them clear and relevant – three bullet points right away, or only after a sentence or short paragraph.
How You Can Compete with Miller Beer’s Ad Budget – The idea is that your prospect is somehow being overwhelmed by the competition in some way. If you have a way for small businesses to compete with WalMart when they move to town, you could make a lot of money.
I’ve noticed there are four companies of one type in Milwaukee that advertise in the newspaper. Three of them put in black and white quarter page ads once a week. Their messages are weak in my opinion. The fourth company places color newspaper sectionals once or twice a week. They also put half-page, and occasionally full-page color ads in the paper twice a week. The days without color ads usually have half or full page black and white ads.
How can the other 3 companies compete with this advertising juggernaut? That’s just it, I have an idea how they can. Do you think the presidents of these three other companies might open my email?
Broad Category Mass Emails – To be more specific in mass email marketing, you need to have detailed databases and flexible email blasting software. Then, segment like crazy and write subject lines relevant to each segment. Otherwise get a good copywriter and get clever. Think of it like a direct mail piece headline, or something similar.
One on One Emails – All of us send individual emails to people who receive too many emails a day. And yet, we want them to read our emails. Make the subject line something they can relate to. Make it pertinent. Make it informative. Make it ABOUT THEM.
If your subject line includes the name of your product, what you want from them, or bragging claims for you and/or your product, you drastically reduce the likelihood of it being opened. Put your product name in the subject line and you might as well have spent the time playing Solitaire, for all the good the email will do.
The 1st 7 Seconds After They Open Your Email
Now your real 1st 7 seconds begin. The 1st 1/4-TO-1/3 of the email MUST BE ABOUT THEM.
If you want to say your widget will give them a 4.6% increase in productivity, discuss what increasing productivity that percentage might mean to them - without mentioning your product.
You must state something your prospects relate to right away. Go back to everything I’ve written in this series to see different ideas to cause the prospect to read into the meat of your message. Couch the idea of them doing what you want in terms of them benefiting. Make it about them.
But remember emails are brief and choppy. Prospects don’t want to read large missives in emails. They like bullet points. They like one, two ideas at the most per email.
If you have a lot to say, write a letter to them, make a PDF of it, and attach it to the email.
Then make the purpose of you email message to convince them to read the attached PDF.
I say make a PDF for one main reason. Though Microsoft Word is the de facto word processing software, people have different fonts on their computers. That is just one of several reasons why someone might open a Word.doc you send, and have the formatting go off tilt. The .doc will look like a mess to some degree, and subconsciously the reader will tar your message with the brush of unprofessionalism.
Speaking of unprofessionalism – Never send out an email without proofreading it. If you aren’t a good proofreader, ask someone else to proof it, or write the email a day ahead of time and wait until the next day when you can read it with some objectivity. Proximity Blindness is what I call my ability to write something and not see the glaring errors in it right away. I’m too close to see the errors for the trees.
The length of the email determines quite often if the email will be read or not. Therefore, go back after letting the email sit for at least a few minutes to a half hour. Do something else. Then, in addition to proofreading, see just how many words you can cut out of it.
If I open an email, I usually read all or at least most of it right then, if it’s relevant to me, and if it brief. If it’s long, even if I want to read it, I usually put it off “until I have more time.” I hardly ever go back to read that email.
Postscripts – Take a tip from the great copywriters of direct mail – use a postscript in your emails.
Right after the first line, the P.S. stands the best chance of being read. Of course, if you email is so long the P.S. can’ be seen, it won’t be read either, but I hope you’ll remedy that before you get to the end.
I suggest buying Bob Bly’s Book, The Copywriter’s Handbook. It has a major section on writing sales letters. Read that section several times over a few weeks. Use it, but remember – an email is a short letter. Also, read what he says on headlines and think about subject lines.
The old master copywriters might be the best proponents of Relevance Marketing. A good bit of their work might need to be updated, but their techniques and tactics are brilliant. Oh, and Bob Bly’s not that old, just that good, particularly on technical copywriting.
