First impressions matter.
“Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
— David Ogilvy, advertising legend
Your email subject line matters. A lot.
So this article is all about learning how to rock your online ‘envelope’ – which is really what determines if your email will get opened.
When you stop to think about this, it makes a lot of sense. Your email subject line has a function! And its form should follow that function.
- First, it must capture attention.
- Second, it must convince people to open your message.
People’s inboxes are increasingly cluttered, so you need to stand out. Big time! Really, you’ve probably got no more than two seconds to make an impression.
Do you think carefully about purpose when you create your email subject line? Do you even craft it at all, or do you delegate this essential function to someone else, perhaps an assistant or someone in your marketing or digital communications department? Someone who perhaps doesn’t really understand the email’s primary purpose as well as do you?
If you’re like most nonprofit fundraisers and marketers, you likely spend a lot of time crafting the perfect email body copy, selecting images and figuring out just the right design that will entice someone to respond to your call to action. Then, at the last minute, you’re ready to send it and hastily come up with a subject line.
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