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Create Email Subject Lines That Draw Prospects In

Guest post by: Kendra Lee

Article Overview: Email is now the preferred prospecting tool, far surpassing the phone to the relief of many sellers who hate cold calling. Yet it hasn’t necessarily made prospecting any easier. Response rates are low and many sellers are discouraged by how difficult it is to engage contacts.

Create Email Subject Lines That Draw Prospects In

Email is now the preferred prospecting tool, far surpassing the phone to the relief of many sellers who hate cold calling. Yet it hasn't necessarily made prospecting any easier. Response rates are low and many sellers are discouraged by how difficult it is to engage contacts. Often the culprit is the subject line. It's one of the most important keys to getting people to open your emails.

Many sellers love to use fun subject lines like "Enticing Ideas: Kendra Lee, Did You Catch the Wave?" They think that a bit of humor will lighten the recipient's day, prompting them to open it.

Wrong.

Remember who you're writing to and what you're trying to accomplish. Your email is no different than a cold call. You're interrupting the day of an already overworked person.

Picture Steve. He has six meetings and eleven action items to conquer today. In fly forty, fifty, possibly even one hundred emails throughout the day. While humor is fun, it's a waste of valuable time Steve doesn't have. Instead of laughing at cute subject lines and enjoying his mail, he's looking for reasons to hit "delete" and avoid another thing landing on his plate. If he doesn't recognize your name immediately, your lighthearted subject line instantly hits the delete barrier.

Regardless of how busy he is, you want your subject line to draw Steve in with a personal and compelling message.

If you're attempting to secure an appointment or invite a prospect to a web event, try:

• Shall we meet Tuesday?

• Can you talk Wednesday at 2pm?

• Can you attend Friday at 12?

What makes this work when the contact doesn't know you? It feels personal to him.

You're requesting a meeting at a specific date and time. He needs to read enough to determine what you want, then check his calendar to see if he can meet. These subject lines are successful because even though people no longer feel a sense of obligation to return every message, they do feel more obliged to RSVP to a meeting invitation.

Another subject line approach you might use is to share an insight or tip you have for the prospect. Try:

• A hiring idea

• A thought about managing distributed files

• An idea about using your IT to grow client satisfaction

People love a new idea related to their job. Don't share the thought here though. Tease your prospect with enough information about it to entice a response and start a conversation. Suggest a time to discuss it in more detail with them.

Bottom line, make it personal to them, but in a way that doesn't sound like a marketing email.

Steer clear of gimmicks like "Enticing Ideas: Kendra Lee, Did You Catch the Wave?" This didn't have anything to do with me even though it put my name in the subject line. It was clearly a marketing message. No action was required on my part. There was no sense of urgency or compelling reason to open it.

In three seconds it hit my delete barrier. Gone without reading more than the subject line. Don't let that happen to your emails.

Related Articles
  17 Tips For Email Subject Lines That Grab Attention
  A Strategic Look At Email Subject Lines From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  Writing Tip: Use a forecasting subject line
  How writing sales prospecting emails and negotiation emails is different
  Does Your Email Get Read

Article Tags: 2pm, appointment, cold call, culprit, email, fly, humor, mail, prospecting tool, response rates, subject line, subject lines, time steve, web event



Related Forum Posts
Creating unique forum post titles - Hi Evan, As one of the people who spends the most time in these forums, I don't really think it's a sustainable idea to ask users to create unique "Subject Titles" for every post. Even forum loyalists (including myself) are bound to forget on occasion, while the average user won't even care. Instead, would there be a way to leave the "Subject Titles" blank and only allow posts with manually created titles to be submitted? Most people would be too lazy to copy the original title and would therefore be forced to think of a new one (which would likely be unique).
Subject line Etiquette - Another email rant: Is there some place on the internet that outlines proper "Subject line" headings? There mus be a system out there that people use to be more efficient email senders. Not everything that comes into my mail box requires my immediate attention. I would love to educate myself and the people who send me emails on proper subject lines. Maybe something like: "Urgent Review: <<Title of document>>" "Decision Required: "<<Subject matter>>" just something for me to quickly scan the subject lines and decide which ones need my immediate attention. Anyone know of such email standards that exist out there?
Web magazine publisher - My duties 1) Research the articles that goes into each of my webzines - science fiction in all media, various sports (Yay, Lady Vols, 8th championship in 2008, by the way!) 2) Write the articles 3) Format and upload them to the web 4) Email and network various contacts to get out the word that new articles are available. 5) Email authors, actors, etc. etc. to see if they want to do interviews. 6) Advertise for more contributors - and then edit and upload their material!
Re: Subject line Etiquette - [quote="jvprosperity":btyoa0j1]Another email rant: Is there some place on the internet that outlines proper "Subject line" headings? There mus be a system out there that people use to be more efficient email senders. Not everything that comes into my mail box requires my immediate attention. I would love to educate myself and the people who send me emails on proper subject lines. Maybe something like: "Urgent Review: <<Title of document>>" "Decision Required: "<<Subject matter>>" just something for me to quickly scan the subject lines and decide which ones need my immediate attention. Anyone know of such email standards that exist out there?[/quote:btyoa0j1] Hi Andy, The only system I know of at the moment is the "Set Priority" feature on MS Outlook. It allows you to add an exclamation mark to flag the message as being of high, normal or low priority. However, I'd say that a "sender" is still better off using the phone rather than sending an email that's labeled "urgent".
Quality Member - Hi there, I just like compliment my previous post, where I ommitted the 'Subject' title. Check it out. An additional question: What do you think attracts the members to this Forum? Kindest Regards Beat


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