1. Make the Subject line a microcosm of what’s happening in the body of the email. “SAVE THE DATE!!!” doesn’t inform, it just shouts.
2. The best Subject lines — the ones that get opened — are written in teaser language and often include a positive adjective, e.g., “Hey, save this date — You don’t want to miss this fun event!”
3. Yes, ALL CAPS in a Subject line is not only considered shouting according to standard email etiquette, it’s a spam indicator in most Boolean formulas.
4. The date, the most important detail you want to convey, is not only missing from the Subject line, it’s missing from the body. No doubt your strategy was to get recipients to click on the attached pdf, but many readers will have given up a long time before doing so.
5. Alas, the all-important pdf didn’t open for me. The attached word document did, but in general, it’s better to share a link rather than an attachment because less can go wrong.
Make these small changes in your next email and I’ll bet you get a much better response.
Keep up the good work and feel free to share the above tips with people on your team. We’re all learning and we’re all in this together, right?
Michael Angelo Caruso teaches people how to sharpen their presentations.
He is President of Edison House, a Michigan-based consulting company and author of the 5 Cool Ideas books, the FastLearnerAudio CDs, and the Present Like a Pro DVD.
Whether verbal or viral, communication is a key ingredient to business growth.
Craft the right message, present the content in an original way, and you may even become a recognized expert.
