A great headline is crucial to effective online email marketing. A headline is what grabs a reader’s attention, whether as they’re walking past a newsstand or scrolling through a mountain of email. To add to that, not everyone can write a compelling headline—that’s why newspapers and magazines have entire editorial staffs comprised of well paid (and some might say underpaid) individuals who do that sort of thing for a living, and do it well.
The fact is, not every email marketer can afford to hire an editorial staff to help with the email writing and come up with killer subject headers that’ll make their mailing list recipients feel compelled to read further. For those who prefer the DIY approach, here are a few tips on writing an effective email subject line.
- Summarize the gist of your email in a single sentence. If you’re not able to do that, perhaps you need to rework the email to contain more focus.
- Speak in the present tense and make use of what are called “action verbs.” These are words that have a bit more color than standard boring language. For example, use the word “explode” instead of “increase” (as in “Monthly sales explode”).
- Don’t Capitalize Every Word, like I just did. Doing so makes an email subject more difficult to read, thus lowering the chance that the rest of the email message will get read.