As a marketing speaker and marketing coachwho works with professional speakers, consultants, and professional services firms, the topic of email marketing comes up fairly regularly.  

A study conducted by Quiris discovered that people have an inner circle of 16 sources from whom they open e‐mails—that includes e‐zines they subscribe to, and their friends.

What does this mean to you? Simple: the competition is fierce.

You could be giving away free gold bars, but if no one reads any of your message how would anyone know about it? It is the age‐old question what came first—the chicken or the egg? The greatest message no one reads is no more effective than the worst message everyone reads. They have to read your message.

Your typical Internet user is overwhelmed with daily e‐mails, most of which they never read. Do you read all your e‐mail? 

People do not have the time to sit and read every single e‐mail they get. They read their e‐mail the way they read their normal mail, except now they have the power to use a delete button.

They quickly scan two very important lines on every e‐mail that will help them decide. They look at the “from” line, and the subject line.

Always use the same from line when emailing to your subscriber list. Your readers must get to know and trust you. Once you create a bond with your reader and gain their trust, you will make it into their inner circle.

Isn’t this how you decide which e‐mails you will read?

Your subject line is a different story; try to give your reader a reason to read your e‐mail. Offer him a benefit for reading your message. Let him know what is in it for him or her.

Tests show that if you include the readers’ first name in the subject line, you will get a noticeable bump in response.

Think of your subject line as a mini headline. One of my most successful subject lines from my e‐zine was “Do Question Headlines Work?” There was an avalanche of response to that simple subject line.

Michael Masterson has come up with a formula he uses when he writes headlines; it’s called the 4 U’s. Your headline must be useful, unique, ultra specific, and urgent. It is a nifty little checklist. The next time you are stumped for a headline, try the 4 U’s.

Here let me show you how it is done. Check the subject line for the 4U’s, for each U give it a score of 1‐4; 1 being lousy, 4 being excellent. When you’re done average out your score and see what you have. Anything lower than a 3 should probably be re‐written.

Here is a sample subject line from a small business marketing e‐zine:

8 ways to generate a ton of repeat business

Is it useful? Every businessperson or salesperson wants to know how to increase his or her referral business. Yes, it is useful, let’s give it a 4.

Is it unique? Well, not exactly so let’s give it a 2.

Is it ultra specific? You betcha, it tells you there are 8 ways, not a couple or a few but eight specific ways. So let’s give it a 4.

How about urgent? There really is no timeframe given so let’s rate this a 2. If you add these numbers up you get 12 divide that by 4 and you get 3. Not bad, but the real question is - how can YOU do even better?

In the comments section below -- Will you share your thoughts and insights into how YOU decide which emails to open and engage with? 

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