The best email subject line I've seen in my career came through my Inbox this week. Brad G, one of our inside sales reps shared an email he had received from a prospect praising his persistence in prospecting him. We call it "polite persistence" here at AG and I was very proud that the prospect not only responded to Brad, but took the time to compliment his approach and work ethic. Love to see that. As I was closing out the email I glanced at the subject line that Brad had sent to the prospect.
It read "Attention: Jim - Final Follow up"
I'm a big believer in subject lines driving the success of your emails. Your content means NOTHING if you don't first get the prospect to open the email. One of my old school favorites was "follow up: Pete from AG Salesworks". That one always seemed to at least peak people's interest in terms of "what is this guy following up on"? or "do I know Pete"? Either way, they opened it more often than not. Hopefully my content was up the task and they became opportunities for us, but that is a blog for another day.
Brad really kicked my older subject line up a notch by adding some very subtle yet effective verbiage. First, he uses "Attention" to start the subject. I don't know about you, but when I read the word attention I typically pay attention and read the next couple of words. Brad's got the ball rolling nicely here. Next he uses Jim's name. Personalizes it a bit...he's got Jim's attention (by saying "attention") and now Jim is a little more interested because Brad knows his name. Now its time for the grand finale'...Brad closes out the subject line with "Final Follow up". Brilliant!! He's gotten Jim's "Attention", Jim is somewhat comfortable reading because Brad used his name, and he tops it all off by leveraging the greatest fear every true blooded American has...missing out on something. By stating that this is the "Final Follow up", Brad has placed immediate importance on having his email opened and addressed by Jim.
It may seem like an over analysis to you, but hey, it's what we do here. The words matter, the choice of words, their placement, and their intended effect should be well thought out prior to being used. Nowhere is this more important than in the subject line of an email.
Brad nailed it here, and to prove it I figured I'd include the actual response he received from the prospect:
Brad,
You get extra points for being persistent. I do have an interest in seeing a demo of your application and its reports, but I have been quite busy. How about scheduling something on 8/13? That day is completely open on my calendar.
Jim
Jim was later qualified and passed by Brad and the discovery call has been set for our client's sales rep on 8/13. The devil truly is in the details.
I have been taking informal inventory of my inbound email traffic over the last week and I'm quite shocked by what I've found (please keep in mind that I'm not a scientist or statistician..these are approx numbers). Conservatively I receive 300-350 inbound emails per day (new emails, not continuations of existing conversations). I won't get into the details of all the sources (team members, family, friends, viagara spam, etc..) but instead will focus on the 20-30 sales messages I get from various technology and service companies. Of the 20-30, 90-95% are deleted upon receipt. The other 5-10% catch my attention due to a decent subject line. Of those 5-10% that I open perhaps 1 will get me to read through it.
I'm in sales and I run a teleprospecting company so I'm very sympathetic to the people that are trying to reach out to me. I have no doubt that they have good products and they could in fact "Change my business life" as one subject line suggested recently. Unfortunately, they don't know me at all and have never spoken to me so they really have no idea what my business life is all about. How could they possibly know they can change something of which they have so little knowledge? I wasn't offended by that subject line, I just deleted it because it said nothing to me. If you can't tell, the first line of attack for someone trying to get me to read\respond to an email is the subject line. The second line of attack is how you format your email. Here are my two main rules to follow when trying to get a prospect to read your email.
Rule #1: Earn the right to email them.
This doesn't mean you have to get them to request an email, or even have a live conversation with them before you email. You just have to do some homework and put yourself in position to send a more personalized subject line. Call me..Yes, I'll ignore the call most likely, but I'll notice the number and that my phone rang. Leave me a message that I most likely won't listen to (but leave it anyways, I like the effort). Immediately following your voicemail, craft a very brief email and start with the simple subject line "Pete from ABC inc following up on my voicemail". Ok, now you've got my attention I'm thinking "That must have been the guy who's call I just ignored. I wonder what he has to say, it could be important". BAM..I just opened your email!!! Nice work...but if you don't focus on rule #2 you'll waste all this great momentum.
Rule #2: Who you are, why you are emailing, and why they should read it.
Keep it simple guys. I opened the email, start off by letting me know who you are (quickly). Next, tell me why you are calling and please close it out with why I should call you back. If you keep it simple with two or three sentences per area, I'll read it. If what I read resonates I'll email you and ask for more info. If not, I'll still email you because I've devoted some time to reading your email and now I feel obliged to send you quick response as to why it's not a fit.
This may seem like an oversimplification and I'd be happy to share some actual examples of emails that have worked for our team here. Don't overcomplicate your messages or allow your teleprospectors to complicate theirs. Let your outbound marketing efforts saturate the marketplace with your corporate message. When you are the actual touch point between the prospect and your company, you owe it to yourself and that prospect to make it a bit more personal. What do your initial prospecting emails look like?
If you've read
my blogs over the last few months you might have noticed that I am a firm believer that email is without a doubt your most effective weapon in your teleprospecting arsenal. The phone ultimately closes the deal, but you most likely will not have the conversation if email is not an integral part of your call plan.
As important as email might be, it goes well beyond just sending out blind mass email after blind mass email hoping to get a few bites. Don't get me wrong, your timing could be spot on and you may happen to be lucky enough to find someone who might be actively evaluating. The unfortunate side effect is that you could turn off other prospects who could be interested down the road, but are tired of getting inundated with emails which obviously have not been customized to address their specific pain. Point is, since most of us utilize email as a primary part of the prospecting process we need to be more strategic with it's use. Now I'm not saying every prospect should expect a personalized email that took you 20 minutes to write...but there are techniques you can use for it to at least appear as if it is addressing them directly.
To start with, keep the subject line simple and to the point. I generally keep it to a maximum of 10 words. This is what is going to catch your prospects attention, so don't over-complicate your intro. If you have the capacity to customize the subject line- do it! Example "Hi {First Name}, Following-up regarding your wireless initiatives".
Other subject lines that seems to get us a solid response rate is to insert the date you last corresponded with the prospect. For example, "Hi {First Name}, Following up on our conversation on January 15th"
Another tactic that seems to work for us is to send your emails based on your prospect's "lead status". If you've spent a significant amount of time calling into a list, eventually your prospects will land in a particular bucket- from interested, decision maker identified, not interested, and so on. Take the time to draw up an email specific to each of these statuses. So as an example, with your "not interested bucket" let's assume you've taken the time to capture every competitor you've run into during the course of a particular campaign, and you wanted to make the no interest folks aware of your recent ascension to "leader" in the Magic Quadrant.
"Hi {First Name}, Last time we spoke you had mentioned you were working with {Insert Competitor} and we wanted to let you we are now considered the leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant..."
Keep in mind, it is not necessary to draw up an email novella. Staying with the theme of your subject-line, try to keep your email to 60 second read. A big reason for this is that prospects may be more likely to check email on their mobile device first, so you want to make sure it's an easy read and will display correctly. Test it out on your smart phone if necessary. Also, with any introductory email, try to keep it as simple as possible and don't assume the person you are emailing would be involved in the decision making process. Something with a subject line stating- "Referral Help"- and the body of the email saying something as straight-forward as, "I hate to bother you, but could you point me to the person responsible for your lead generation," has gotten us a much higher response rate.
How do you make sure that your emails, or your BDR's emails get read?