Last week, I published “‘A Genius Method’ for Encouraging Customers to Open Your Emails.”
Courtesy of a Money.com article, it was all about writing amazing subject lines – ones that help your communications stand out in crowded inboxes everywhere.
If you’re trying to sell something, whether a story or a service, or you’re trying to gain a reliable following… I can’t accurately say that getting people to click on the correspondences you send is “half the battle.”
However, it is most definitely an enormous sword swing in the right direction.
Or perhaps a better analogy would be this: It’s like successfully breaching an opposing castle’s gates with a battering ram. It’s real progress made.
Of course, if we continue with that comparison, we have to acknowledge there’s still a lot of fighting to be done after that point. You’ve made an entranceway to better access what you came to claim, yes.
Yet that hardly means you can march right up to the throne room and take a seat on the dais.
You still need to be in combat mode for a little while longer.
So let’s say you had a killer subject line – so killer that everyone on your email list clicked on your message right away.
In that case, don’t lose your momentum. Keep them feeling like they’re chatting with a friend, Money.com advises.
For one thing, don’t start off with, “Hello John Stewart,” “Dear Phyllis Broohaha” or, worse still, “Greetings Earthlings.”
Actually, scratch that last one. “Greetings Earthlings” is rather catchy. But “Greetings John Stewart” or “Greetings Phyllis Broohaha” is formal.
It’s boring.
It’s all-around uninspiring.
So do yourself a favor and don’t use it, favoring something like “Hi [insert person's name]” or “Hey [insert person's name]” instead. That more chummy (as in friendly, not shark-baity) opening will set up the equally likable text.
And, for the record, equally likable text doesn’t automatically make it about yourself. It makes it about the reader, just as we discussed last Thursday and will be discussing in further detail down below…
Consider how appealing the following lines could be:
When was the last time you went on an amazing vacation?
If you’re new-car shopping, don’t be fooled.
No matter what they (or you) say, your goals are reachable.
Think about it for a moment. Put yourself in the buyer's seat instead of the seller's.
If you were craving a great getaway, looking to switch vehicles or pining over some achievement you haven’t yet achieved… wouldn’t you be a lot more inspired by that kind of focus rather than:
To book an amazing vacation, go to VacationsRUs.com.
We have the best car prices in town.
Life Cubed helps people achieve their dreams.
Those statements might work well somewhere in the middle of your text. But right off the bat? You’re just better off using a different tact, such as the “you” trick up above.
You’re also better off using contractions (i.e., you’re, it’s, can’t, etc.)… varying your sentence structure so that it doesn’t always just start off with nouns, pronouns and articles (i.e., the, an, a, etc.)… and otherwise simply sounding like yourself instead of a stuck-up, stuffed-up, or buttoned-up person just looking to make a sale.
When it comes to email marketing, think about building a relationship first. The sales will follow much more easily after that.