Most businesses use e-mail to communicate with their customers. But with open rates at all time lows, marketers may want to consider a best practice used by newspaper publishers in the last century to sell special additions printed to cover late-breaking news.

E-mail subject lines are the newspaper boys of yesteryear. They should be designed to convince a recipient that there is something important in the e-mail that they don’t already know and need to read.

Unfortunately, most marketers don’t focus enough on subject lines and that leads to low open rates and lost chances to interact with customers. To counteract the tendency to haphazardly throw a subject line together at the last minute, Kara Trivunovic from ClickZ suggests writing your subject lines first. Starting with the subject line forces you to focus on why the information in your e-mail should be read. Chances are that will make writing the e-mail easier too.

Your audience doesn’t have time to read between the lines so be direct and avoid vague teasers and hype. Imagine a newspaper boy yelling, “First National Bank robbed! Read all about it!” Give your audience a subject line like “Direct Mail Campaign Delivers Seven Figure Sales Increase” and they may want to read all about it.

Quote of the Week:
“Phrases that have historical significance or become headlines don’t just magically appear in the moment. They are mindfully planned.” ~Nancy Duarte