Each time you have a new newsletter written you will need to send your subscribers an email containing either the newsletter in text format or a link that takes the subscriber to it depending on how you plan to distribute it.
Regardless of how you have decided to provide your email to your subscribers, one thing is certain – you will need an email subject line that makes people want to read your newsletter to achieve the highest readership & response rate possible.
There are several ways to make an effective subject line. Some of which include:
1) Make it interesting
2) It should relate to content in your newsletter
3) Make it short but not too short
4) Use Capital Letters
Now lets discuss these in a little more depth.
-Make It Interesting-
Make the subject line jump out at your readers as much as possible or grab their interest. Your email is competing against all of the other emails that this subscriber receives to their email account, so the idea is to make it stand out from the crowd.
A great way to create a catchy subject line is to invoke curiosity in the reader. Consider this example – tell me which subject line sounds more interesting:
“lesson 7″ or “Lesson 7 — Brilliant Watercolor Secrets”?
Many of you would agree that “Lesson 7 — Brilliant Watercolor Secrets” is more vibrant, and adding curious words like “Secrets” or little phrases like “I Bet You Didn’t Know This” that leave the subscriber in suspense are great subject lines.
Some other ideas include asking the subscriber a question such as “Are You Satisfied With Your Watercolors?”, or providing solutions to problems people have, like “Fix Your Watercolors Like The Pros”.
–It Should Relate To Content In Your Newsletter–
The subject line is directly related to information provided in your newsletter.
If your subject line doesn’t relate to what your email contains its likely that your readers will unsubscribe from your newsletter, and some might even think your email is spam.
People don’t want to feel mislead, so definitely keep the subject in accordance with your newsletters content.
–Make It Short But Not Too Short–
When writing your subject line make it as short as possible without loosing the meaning of what you are trying to communicate.
Below is an example of a subject line before reducing it’s size, and then after making it as short as possible.
LONG VERSION: “Your guide on constructing shelving at home in 3 hours or less with minimal costs involved”
SHORT VERSION: “Low Cost 3 Hour Home Shelf Building Guide”
The condensed version is less than half as long as the original, yet gets directly to the point to say the same thing and looks much less wordy and more exciting.
The reason you want it short is because the emails received by your subscribers will only display a limited number of words in the subject line, and your subscribers will likely scan the emails to see what the subject lines are before choosing whether or not to open it.
If the subject line is too long it may be glanced over, skipped, or avoided due to the extra time it takes to concentrate on what is being written.
Just as it can be too long, it can also be too short. I would personally suggest no less than three words unless you have a supper catchy reason to use less. The reason I say this is because it looks suspicious when the subject line comes with too few words in the subject line.
–Capital Letters–
You may notice in the section above on making your subject line interesting when I compared the “lesson 7″ to “Lesson 7 – Brilliant Watercolor Secrets” the first example was not capitalized, while the second example had every word capitalized.
Unless it is a longer subject line I like to use capital letters for the first letter of every word to make it stand out a little more, but don’t do it if it makes the text look awkward, like when a new word is next to acronyms etc.
I hope that these ideas will help you to create creative, interesting, and catchy subject lines. Sometimes it may take a little thought before you come up with the right catch phrase, but the more you work on them the better you get at writing them.
Beyond the subject line, frequency considerations need to be determined as well. Will you be sending your newsletter or blast emails daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly? The answer to this question depends on how often there is something worthwhile to communicate to your subscribers about your industry. Stockbrokers who specialize in short term trading of stocks may want to use a daily blast email to tell their clients of daily changes in market conditions, while a Fortune 500 company may only produce a quarterly newsletter around the time that they report earnings.
Depending on what type of service or product you are offering, some people will mail out emails on their subscribers’ paydays bi-weekly, or Fridays or the first of the month when their subscribers have money to spend.
Regarding frequency, one thing that I need to mention is to not over send emails to your subscribers. I was receiving a subscription where the author once sent me eleven emails in less than 24 hours. I would go numerous days without receiving any emails from this author, then would receive between one and eleven emails all at once. The content was quality, and I must confess that the subject lines were superior to the ones I write, but it was not delivered in an organized manner and it felt like a dump truck was emptying it’s payload into my email account when I would receive so many at once. Over sending could also be construed as spam — which is something that you need to avoid since it can have legal repercussions. Next to SPAM, I can’t think of many quicker ways to ruin your mailing list than this sort of inconsistent email dumping on your subscribers.
