The Most Important, and Most Often Overlooked, Element of Your Email Message

Despite the surge in mobile phones, tablets and texting, email communication remains a common way to connect with various audiences—internal and external. Yet, because it remains so common, those communicating via email face several challenges: getting their email to their intended user, keeping their email out of the spam/junk folder and, ultimately, having their email opened and read.

One key way to boost the odds that these things will happen is often overlooked or not given the consideration it deserves:

A compelling email subject line.

I work with small, service-related businesses in the B2B space (e.g. entrepreneurs, consultants, healthcare professionals, attorneys, engineers, etc.), and I also teach advertising and marketing courses at a local university. The biggest mistake I see, and the one most critical to ensuring some traction for your email communication efforts, is users not spending enough time to carefully consider the content contained in the subject line.

Think about your own email inbox. When you look at it, what do you see? A long string of subject lines, one on top of the other. These subject lines are what will ultimately compel you to either open the message or ignore it.

Consequently, your key consideration with any email communication is what you will say in your subject line to help your message stand out from the masses of other messages that your intended audience will be faced with.

Your subject line can be considered in the same manner as an advertising headline. The goal is to convey some meaningful benefit to your target audience, quickly and succinctly. The “meaningful” part is important; it requires that you understand your market well and know what is likely to move them to some action—in this case opening the email.

That’s the starting point—the must-have in order to get your target to go any further. If an email is never opened, the design of the message within makes no difference. You may have the most visually appealing, most compelling message that could be created, but if your email subject doesn’t compel a click, that message will never be seen. Your first hurdle in email communication is just getting the recipient to click on your subject line to see what else you have to say.

What’s in your subject line?

Recommended Reading:

The Everything Guide to Customer Engagement

Author: Linda Pophal

Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR, is owner/CEO of Strategic Communications, LLC, and a marketing and communication strategist with expertise in strategic planning, B2B content marketing, PR/media relations, social media and SEO. Her background as a freelance business journalist, advertising copywriter and corporate communication professional provides the foundation for understanding how to produce and use high-quality, personalized content to inform, motivate and engage audiences. This, coupled with expertise in online marketing, SEO and social media, serves as a foundation for working with clients to find the most cost effective combination of traditional and digital communication tactics to get the results they're looking for. Linda is accredited through the American Marketing Association and is a member of the Association of Health Care Executives, the Society for Human Resource Management and the Association of Health Care Journalists. View all posts by Linda Pophal