This story appears in the
April 2005 issue of
Entrepreneur.
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For e-mail marketers, the biggest challenge today is getting
your pitch past a prospect's hair-trigger delete impulse--not
to mention his or her spam filter. It's akin to the challenge
direct marketers had when mailings only came in envelopes: Will it
arouse enough curiosity to get opened, or will it be trashed? Even
today, the outer-envelope teaser causes as much hand-wringing as
the guts of the mailing itself. So, too, does the subject line of a
marketing e-mail.
What can you say in a subject line that is compelling enough to
motivate that all-important click? In Web Copy That Sells, author Maria Veloso
suggests you use the word this in subject lines: "This is so
powerful because it arouses the recipient's curiosity, and they
must open the e-mail to find out what this is." Examples
include "Who said this?" and "This finally came . .
. ." She also suggests the word here, as in "Here's
what I promised . . . ." Veloso wisely recommends using
incomplete thoughts and adding ellipsis points because they create
a "brain itch" to know the completed thought inside.
Are these the advertising curiosity-arousers of a new century?
Not at all. The logic behind them is as old as the hills, and the
suggested teasers are just as valid and applicable in ink on
papyrus.
Jerry
Fisher is a freelance advertising copywriter and author of
Creating Successful Small Business Advertising.