I Wrote this Subject Line Specifically for YOU – now open it and read it!

We had a customer years ago that built the majority of their business through email marketing and their website, www.teamsportsplanet.com. The owners are marketing geniuses by MY measurement stick – anyone that increases sales by several million dollars in 2 to 3 years through marketing fits the definition for me. After we had helped them transition off of the CRM package that we supported for them to one of our partners [a much larger CRM package], I took the time to interview one of the owners so I could share their story as I went around delivering Sales and Marketing Seminars for different organizations.

The Secret:
I learned something that is so fundamental during that interview that will stick with me forever – but it is the #1 reason that people fail when it comes to email marketing. The rule is broken every day by people that you know that send you emails expecting you to buy their product or service. Are you ready for the magic? It’s the subject line. In his words to me that day, “If you are going to send me something and expect me to open it AND read it AND possibly buy your product, if the subject line is not about me, my problems, my issues………then Why in the [fill in the blank] did you send it to me…..I’m probably going to click Unsubscribe and now everything you wanted to send me in the future won’t be received”.

Tying your CRM Package to Your Email Marketing:
We are firm believers that a CRM system tied to your email marketing system is the key to making this happen correctly and help your ‘open and click rates’ to sore. If you sell uniforms to schools and hospitals for example, your monthly newsletter that includes articles for everyone may get opened but won’t have a great response. Your CRM package has fields that identify what type of customer or prospect you are tracking and what they buy from you. An email to a school with the subject line: Fall Hem Length Changes – Do they comply with your policies? – will get opened…..a lot….. if you send it to your contacts from schools, not hospitals. Likewise, an email to a hospital – Fabric Immunology Compliance Study Results – Surgical Clothing Regulations are Changing – will get opened…by hospitals. We use a product called SwiftPage that can be used as a stand alone blaster or tied directly to Sage ACT! It competes with Constant Contact and has some compelling reasons to switch over.

How Long Does it Take?
It takes a wopping 5 extra minutes to come up with a subject line for an email that will get opened. Here’s a great tip – if you aren’t good at creating great subject lines – I bet some of your customers are – how about sending a smaller email blast to close contacts at schools with the subject line: Can you help me create a subject line for this School Based Email Blast? Or run a contest for the best submission until you get the hang of it. The companies that send the largest email blasts will test 2 to 5 subject lines with smaller populations, look at the open rate, then shift all of the subject lines on a massive blast to the one with the highest open rate. And it costs almost nothing to do it.