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from Kenny Jahng

There will be over 4 Billion email accounts by end of 2015. The average person receives over 575 emails per week.

That’s a lot of email! It’s increasingly harder for organizations to get the attention of someone “on your list.”

That’s why the subject line is the most critical sentence in your entire email.

Here’s 5 easy formulas for writing email subject lines to get your emails opened immediately:

1

KENNYHello

personalized subject lines

Use your email list database and use the “insert variable”

function to include the person’s name or some other

personalization in the actual subject line.

Examples

Rich, you won’t believe who’ll be at church this Sunday

I was wondering how many are in Morristown, NJ

2qUESTIONS AS YOUR SUBJECT LINE

Examples

Do you have a better question I can use?

When should our retreat be held?

Questions force the reader to engage even momentarily. You can also write questions so that they

aren’t fully definitive but somewhat leading. Curiosity is the trigger to move them to click open.

Ask good questions. Get good results.

3LISTS & NUMBERS IN THE SUBJECT LINE

Examples

4 Things To Do Before The Upcoming Retreat

30 Simple Ideas For Family Devotional Time With The Kids

Numbers and structured lists help readers know exactly what they’ll get. It also sets the expectations that the content will probably be

scannable. Remember, if the list is related to a call to action (you want them to do stuff), then you probably want a low number in the subject line; if you are providing a resource list, higher numbers increase the potential for a reader to find *something* valuable

making it worth it to click through to open the email. 5251012 7

4HOW TO SUBJECT LINE

Examples

How to read the entire New Testament in 90 days even if you have 2 kids, a dog and a spouse (life!)

How to Pray - 3 of my favorite ways to approach prayer time

If you can be practical on a very tactical level, you become super relevant. These are emails that can get printed,

forwarded, etc. (You want that!) Make sure you focus on the benefit, not just the actual process or steps you’re

walking through in the email.

5SCARCITY / URGENCY IN THE SUBJECT LINE

Examples

Only 2 seats left for the parenting workshop as of 10am

Last year’s program sold out in a week. This year seems to be quicker.

Time is ticking, and you don’t want your friends to miss out. This is the email subject line that uses transparency to

motivate people to follow your call to action. You can’t use this too often or people will tune it out. But when done well,

it presents the offer as a service to the recipient.

Email is still the killer app. Using email strategically allows you to scale

personal relationships and increase engagement.

If your organization wants help on mastering email messaging with your audience or community, contact Kenny Jahng at

www.BigClickSyndicate.com or connect with him @KennyJahng on Twitter.

<http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Email-Statistics-Report-2011-2015-Executive-Summary.pdf>

* Industry figures from: Radicati, Sarah and Hoang, Quoc, * “Email Statistics Report, 2011-2015,” * The Radicati Group, Inc. Web. Accessed February 2015.