1. Curiosity. I often use strange headlines ‘Don’t put dried peas up your nose’ or unusual words to get my emails noticed and opened.
2. Use numbers in my headlines. ‘How I got this wrong 7 times before it finally worked for me’ because (I’m told) digits stop wandering eyes. I know they work in my email subject lines, I just don’t know WHY.
3. I ask questions in the headline. For example ‘Can anyone tell me how to do THIS?’ will give you a big spike in open rates
4. Add personality. You’ll lose some subscribers who don’t like your personality, but you’ll develop many rabid fans that do.
5. Get personal. When you start including stories about your life, or things that happen to you, you’ll find your open rates rise
6. Using one-line or short subjects that don’t mean anything to anyone else. This is really an extension of using curiosity but it’s ever so slightly different because it makes sure of short subject lines.
Examples I’ve used are:
‘Facepalm number 3’
‘How did it swell up THAT big?’
‘Groan…’
‘When women attack’
‘Finally the pain stopped’
I think if I had to sum up the whole email marketing ethos in one short description it would be this:
Put yourself in the place of the person who’s receiving your emails. Why would you open YOURS rather than the hundred other emails that arrive in their inbox daily?
…and appeal to human nature – because all six of the tips in this article wouldn’t work if it
wasn’t for human nature!
