I know I’ve talked about this subject before, but it bears repeating. Your email newsletter competes for eyeballs from your readers. Unless you have a readership sitting at their computers waiting for just the right email from you, you have only a few seconds to get their attention before they hit the delete key.
Based on what I’ve been seeing in my email box, there are a lot of you who didn’t “get the memo” on this topic. During this month, I have received no less than ten email newsletters that have the subject Our Newsletter. Ugh!
Yes, at least ten newsletters from different companies had that subject line. Not good. And worse than that, who cares? A boring title like that doesn’t entice me to open the mail and find out what you have to tell me.
Make the subject interesting so I want to open the mail and read what you have to say. The List Building for Bloggers book contains excellent tips on what makes an email subject line successful. In a nutshell:
- Tell the reader what’s inside.
- Don’t use the same subject line for each issue.
- Don’t include your company name or date.
Always remember to look at your client / prospect communications from their perspective. If you do, it will help you spice things up a bit and get you more opens — which is one of the objectives in the first place. This is one of the many tips I share in my free email marketing tips online course (delivered via email – of course!).
Before you leave — I’d love to send you my weekly email newsletter. Just sign up by filling out the subscribe box up there to the right of this message and press Send the Tips!
About Denise O'Berry
I agree 100%… I create a monthly newsletter for my brick & mortar (Initially You Too-personalized gifts). I sent my newsletter for about a year with the Month-Year heading. Open rates were really poor. Then I had an “aha moment”. Now I tell them what I offer-that THEY WANT in the subject line. My opens have tripled!!! If you don’t get them in the first 5 seconds, you are an instant delete. Try it-you’ll like it! & so will your customers.
Sharon Blumenthal-The Present Pro for over 30 yrs.
http://www.Names2U.com
Quick question about the using the same subject line for each issue thing. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. I’m currently using the Aweber Blog Blast feature, while it’s not a “newsletter” per say it is a weekly email that goes out with the same/similar subject line. What do you think of these? I’m getting some decent open rates, but it has room for improvement of course.
Loretta — First, congratulations for sending a weekly update to your subscribers! I’m familiar with Aweber’s blog blast because that’s who I use. The way you can differentiate and make sure you get good opens is to have a descriptor in your subject. For your cross stitch site that might be [Stitching the Night Away] This Week’s Handy Tips from Loretta. That tells folks who the email is from and what it’s about, plus gives it a bit of a personal touch — which is about the best you can do with the broadcaster from Aweber. Does that help?
I had to go log in and see what I was using because I couldn’t remember.
Stitching the Night Away with You this Week – What’s New? is what I had in there already
That’s a good title Loretta. If your readers relate to you as part of the brand, you could add your name. Might want to try it and see if it helps your opens. Also, I would take out the “with You this Week” and go for [Stitching the Night Away] What’s New from Loretta or [Stitching the Night Away] What’s New This Week from Loretta
Now I realize your name is probably in the from field, but most people look at that second if they don’t recognize the subject. I really like to [] the main newsletter name because it helps it stand out in a flooded email box. So for your existing subject, that would be [Stitching the Night Away] with You this Week – What’s New?