John is a very smart man. He is the kind of engineer you want to have around when complex problems show up. But John wasn't really good at writing. He could do some very nice technical documentation, but when the decision to sell his own software was made, he did not have a clue as to how to do it.
I worked with John and his product. One of the issues he had problems with was writing good email subjects. He seemed to not understand how to write something without it reading like Spam.
John and I talked about this. Turns out, he hated receiving Spam. We all do. The hate towards Spam was not helping John. Everything he wrote looked like Spam to him.
After a few days of working out the issue, I met with John and taught him how to write email subjects. He was very skeptical but at the end of the meeting was quickly writing good email messages that would ultimately prove to test positive (and in the process sell his products).
####I'm now going to tell you what I told John in that meeting.
John, you have to realize one thing. People need to learn about your product. Its a great solution to a costly problem. You had a costly marketing problem, and I contacted you to fix it. Weren't you happy I did? Of course, because now you get to sell your product with more ease.
Realize that you are not bothering most people if your product actually solves a problem.
Now, you also need to know that the most important part of an email marketing campaign is the email subject. If people don't open the email, then no one will learn about your great product. So we need to focus on making sure that email subject is good. You will need to test which email subject works better than others. This is a must if you want to get good results.
Testing is obligatory if you want success.
John looked at me and said "What does that have to do with anything?" "Its very important, John" - I said. Because if you really believe that your product helps people, then writing to them will be so much easier. His eyes opened up when he realized the point. And let me add that the tool to measure how many people are learning about your solution is called A/B testing. If you don't test, you will not be able to communicate your message effectively. I will cover A/B testing in a future Marketing Bit.
Then John asked:
"Ok. I get it. But how do I write the dammned thing?"
You want to use a personal tone for emails. Write as if you were talking to someone you knew. Instead of writing subjects like:
$product will save you thousands of dollars on $problem.
You should write:
My name is John. I developed $product. It aims to help people who have issues
with $problem.
Now John, there are some simple techniques you can use (and test) to write good email subjects. Here they are:
- Include your name in the title.
- Include your telephone number in the title.
- State your intent in the subject.
- Don't include the offer in the subject, unless people subscribed to receive such offers.
- Look at your inbox. What messages did you not open?
- Include the name of the recipient.
- Do not be vague.
- Say where you are writing from (Hi, its orangethirty from Marketing Bits...).
John went on to sell (and continues to do so) many products from the insight learned that evening. I've included another example for you to study:
Bad:
The information you requested.
Good:
I think this might help you save some time with $problem.
Better:
$name, I help people deal with $problem. Do you mind taking a quick look?
Sometimes the email subject is the email itself. I once ran a campaign that was made up of one line:
If you need a software engineer give me a call at 787 901 9146. I'm available.
Results? Two contracts in the five figures.
####Exercise
Write two (2) email subjects using the tips above.
Example:
Hey, its $name from $company. I thought you would like to check out our $product.
I sell $product. Someone told me you might be in need of one. Contact me at $phone number
if you need some help.
Having trouble geting started?
Close your eyes and imagine that you are sitting across a friend. Try and explain to them what is it that you sell. Then write down what you thought of. Whithin that material you should find some very valuable points to guide you in writing your email subject.