You just gotta love this woman. She says so much in so few words and never pontificates.
I’m referring to the redoubtable Marcia Yudkin who, I truly believe, never sleeps. If you don’t know about her, I recommend you visit her site
posthaste and sign up for her Marketing Minute email dispatches. I read them every time they hit my inbox and always learn something about marketing and my copywriting craft.
Ms. Yudkin recently wrote about improving email subject lines, a topic Jill Konrath has also addressed. They both believe in short, snappy, and relevant, and Ms. Yudkin has some great things to add.
Did you know, for instance, that some email programs show only the first 25 characters of your subject line? If it’s corpulent, this real estate restriction puts you at a disadvantage. The body of the message is important, of course, but the subject line determines whether recipients turn into readers. Look through your delete box and find a couple of emails you 86ed without reading. Check out the subject lines and take a stab at rewriting them for interest and relevance.
Another Yudkin suggestion: don’t repeat yourself. If your company name is part of your email address, there’s no need to repeat it in the subject line. And don’t go for mystery. Recipients need to have a clue about the subject, or they won’t bother to read your message.
There’s a lot of email flying around, and lots of good and bad subject lines out there. Let them be your instructors.
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