Email Subject line

1. Focus on Your Audience

The fastest way to get your email deleted is to write a subject line that’s selling a product to someone who doesn’t want it.

You’re writing these emails for your readers, so make that clear.

2. Remember Your Goals

You may need to focus on the reader, but you can’t forget what you want to accomplish with your email. Every email needs to have a specific call-to-action that your subject line prepares them for it.

3. Craft Compelling Headlines

An effective email subject line captures the reader’s attention and piques their interest to see more. It may seem difficult, but there are six different tactics you can use to create the perfect subject line for your readers.

4. Test and Track

All of the things we’ve discussed in this article are best practices to get you started. The actual best practices are the ones that work for your business and your customers.

No two businesses are alike, so it’s imperative that you test and track which subject lines perform the best.

Best Email Subject Line Styles

1. Simple, No Nonsense Email Subject Lines

There’s a lot to be said for minimalism – users need you to be clear and concise in your subject lines, as time is always an asset.

Hupport conducted an email subject line study and found that short, descriptive subject lines fare better than cheesy lures. Some might bristle up at the accusation that humor and creativity should take a back seat when creating good subject lines for emails, especially since many marketing experts say otherwise.

2. Funny Email Subject Lines

A humorous subject line can really stick out among the dry, dull emails surrounding it. Humor it a touchy thing though – it thrives on exclusivity, which isn’t always great if you’re trying to appeal to the masses. However, if you know your audience well and your emails are targeted, a well-placed joke can get your email opened and can earn major reputation points with folks on your wavelength.

3. Controversial/Shocking Email Subject Lines

Controversy (sometimes) sells, and it most certainly grabs attention. Using shock, controversy, or insult in your subject lines requires you to tread really carefully. You may get opens, but at the cost of customers. This strategy requires you to be confident in your understanding of your audience’s tastes and perceptions. It’s a bit of a gamble, but the pay-off can be pretty great – would you simply gloss over the subject lines below? Not likely.

Everyone Is Gay: Social Media As Social Action
Why Your 5-Year-Old Is More Digital Than Most CMOs
Your Marketing Sucks: Why You Need to Think Local

4. Single-Word Subject Lines

One effective email subject line strategy involves going ultra-minimalist with one-word subject lines. Let’s take a peek at the promotions tab of my Gmail. The promotion tab is scheduled for a major makeover – Google is starting to display promotional emails in a image-oriented design inspired by Hupport. If this new setup sticks, pictures will usurp subject lines as the pivotal email element.

5. Email Subject Lines with Numbers & Lists

Many of the factors that make up a good blog post title also make a good email subject line. Incorporating numbers into your subject line attracts attention, as our brains are naturally drawn to digits. This tends to be why top 10 lists are so successful – lists are easier for our brains to process and they create curiosity, in addition to providing the promise of a quick and easy read.

6. Personalized Subject Lines

By personalization I don’t mean incorporating a user’s name into the subject line – this has become so common practice that many users glaze over these as spam. Instead, try location-specific offers and language, or interest targeting. Living Social and Group on are old pros at this, sending emails with subject lines promoting deals in your area.

7. Questions & Other Punctuation in Email Subject Lines

Question marks and unusual punctuation offer another method for standing out from the email masses.

9. Mysterious Email Subject Lines

As Scooby-Doo or Sue Grafton can tell you, people dig a little mystery in their lives. Giving readers a little taste of something intriguing might cause them to bite.

5 Tips for Writing Effective Email Subject Lines

Tip 1: Go Easy on the CAPS

While one or two fully capitalized words alone won’t get caught by the filters, it does edge you ever closer to the dreaded spam folder. Capitalization can be a powerful tool to draw attention where desired, but with great power comes great responsibility. Use it sparingly and professionally. Capitalizing as you would a title seems to be an unofficial industry standard.

Tip 2: Make a List

People like lists. Perhaps it’s the promise of information diced into easily digestible snippets or maybe it feels like zeroing in on the most important aspects of a given topic. Whatever the reason, people on the Internet enjoy consuming information via numbered/bulleted lists!

Tip 3: Personalize the Message

Personalization in the subject line can be quite a contentious topic. One study from hupport suggests that including names in the subject line may actually be detrimental to open rates. However, the data scientists at Hupport say that personalizing subject lines to include the recipient’s full name can positively impact open rates.

Tip 4: Create a Sense of Urgency!

While people don’t like to be yelled at in all CAPS, they do respond well to time sensitive material. The fear of missing out can be a powerful motivator. Key words like “Urgent” or “Breaking” can positively impact open rates.

Tip 5: Keep it Short

Keeping your subject line short and to-the-point is instrumental to establishing a good first impression with the recipient. The ideal subject line lays out the point of the email and sets the expectations for when the reader opens it. This should all be accomplished in 50 characters or less.

15 ways to get more sales referrals in no particular order

Create a referral program with complementary providers to exchange referrals. Be sure you only include providers in this network that you’d be comfortable recommending to your best client or best friend.

Recognize and thank your referral sources. This could be with a simple phone call, email, or even better, a handwritten note. The important thing is to express your appreciation. You’ll also encourage additional referrals this way.

If you have clients who don’t refer, create another way for them to recommend you (e.g., case study, testimonial). I once worked for a large organization that prohibited written testimonials and discouraged referrals; however, I was able to provide recommendations by phone for vendors with which I worked. Two vendors I worked with took advantage of this opportunity and closed several deals by having select high-value prospects speak with me.

Make sure your current clients know about all the products and services you offer and how you help so they can either refer within their company or to others they know. Too often sellers assume their clients know more about them than they do. If you’re a market research firm and a client uses only your online survey research services, for example, make sure they know about your intercept interview service or focus group capabilities.

Add a link to a form on your website for referral submissions.

Be remarkable; remind clients why your company is special. Give them something (good) to talk about.

Inspire confidence. It’s risky referring someone—what if it’s not successful? You can inspire confidence in your referral sources by letting them know that 80% (or whatever) of your business comes from repeat customers.

Offer a referral commission.

Provide valuable content your referral sources can share with their network—an invitation to a breakfast or lunch seminar or webinar on an industry topic, research briefs, an article about a regulatory change or industry trend, etc. Make it something special for them to share.

Treat the vendors and suppliers with which you do business as partners. Make sure they’re aware of who and how you help.

Update your LinkedIn profile and stay engaged with your contacts regularly.

Create a list of buyers you want to work with. Check out their LinkedIn profiles to see whether you’re connected in any way. If so, reach out to them via your network—whether it’s an individual, a company, or a group.

Treat your clients as partners, too. Let them know you view them as a strategic partner, and tell them you hope they’ll do the same with you. Create formal channels to share referrals.

Give a referral. It’s one of the best ways to get one in return.

Ask for referrals. You’ll get a lot more referrals if you ask for them. As you’re completing a project with a client, simply ask if they know anyone who would benefit from something similar.

Ways to ask for referrals cold email

1) The client who needed help

This one has been around for decades. Someone had a problem and came to you. It might be a home repair. Maybe they wanted to sell their house. You did a spectacular job for them. The problem went away. They are more than satisfied.

2) The person who wanted to learn

There was a change in the tax laws. A client wondered if it applied to them. You are a CPA, so they called and asked. You explained it simply and thoroughly. They were happy. Logically, they know other people in the same boat.

3) The dissatisfied friend

You do a great job helping your client manage their investments. After presenting their quarterly review, they realize you provide great service. Your primary investment strategy is professional money management.

4) The social introduction

You want to meet someone influential. Through LinkedIn you have learned one of your first-level contacts knows them. Business might come long-term, but right now you want a social introduction. You call your first-level contact.

5) The more specific, the better

“Who do you know…” can sound very vague. People’s minds usually go blank. Detailed requests often focus their attention.

6) Problem – solution – action

Clients may be willing to make an introduction, but may not know how. You might need to coach them. Offering to meet together over dinner helps.

7) Exclusivity

Your client might assume you have all the clients you can handle. After all, you are always busy! Exclusivity sells. I learned this from the founder of a financial planning firm.

Cold Email SPAM

There is a difference between bulk pharmacy product emails (which accounts for 81% of spam) and one-to-one emails to a targeted business audience.

Under the CAN-SPAM act, you are able to send emails to business people that you do not know. However, you want to make sure you are complying with the rules that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has outlined.

Luckily, that isn’t difficult to do. Here are the seven things you need to incorporate when sending cold emails:

Don’t misrepresent who you are – Basically, your “From”, “To”, and “Reply-To” information needs to identify who you are.
Don’t use misleading subject lines – Using a subject line of “Your receipt” when pitching your product/service would be misleading. Keep it real.
Identify if the email is an ad – If your email is an advertisement or special coupon offer, just make sure it is labeled as such.
Include your business address – This can be a PO Box or your physical address, but you have to include it. Ideal placement for this information would be in your signature.
Give them an opt-out option – You don’t have to use an “unsubscribe” link which takes away some of the personal aspects of the email. Instead, ask them, “Please let me know if you are not the right person to contact for this.” It’s a good alternative that keeps things personal.
Honor opt-outs – If they don’t want any future emails, make sure they don’t get any more emails. I don’t even respond to the request, I just make sure they don’t get any more follow-ups.
Know what others do/send on your behalf – Even if you hire a company to handle your email outreach, you are still legally responsible. Make sure whoever you have working on your email outreach understands these seven rules.

Cold Email Best Practices

Cold Email

Put yourself in their shoes

How do your customers view the problem you are trying to solve? Have your message meet them where they are at, and help them solve a legitimate problem.

Write Like You Talk

People can sniff out “marketing copy” right away. Write your message like something you would send to a coworker, not giving a speech to 1,000 people.

Forget the Introduction

When someone views your message on their mobile device, and the first line reads, “I’m Mike with ABC Corporation,” you make it very easy for your prospect to delete the message and not read any further, especially if you hit them on a busy day. Ditch this intro! There will be an appropriate time for an introduction later.

Get to the Point

You have a very short window to get your prospects attention. Lead with your most compelling piece of info, and make it good!

Keep it Short

If your message is a burden for your prospect to read and/or respond to, they won’t. So keep it short and simple.

Personalize What You Can

If you can, adding your prospects first name is good, but not essential. Especially if you can jump right into a conversation they are excited to talk about.

Put All Contact Info in Your Signature

Make it easy for your prospect to do a little detective work by architecting your signature to include the links you want them to see. Be subtle about this, less is more in many cases.

Avoid Images

Images can hurt deliverability, and may be better served on a landing page after your prospect clicks your link.

Include a P.S.

You can use the P.S. to satisfy the opt-out requirement, keeping the message conversational rather than having the obnoxious opt-out link.

Close with a Question

Asking a quick question can be a great way to entice your prospect into a conversation with you. A great way to begin the relationship building phase towards the sale!

Follow Up, then Follow Up Again!

If your prospect doesn’t reply to your initial message, go ahead and follow up. They may still be interested when they have more time to respond!

Test Your Messages

Try different hooks in each of your messages. Try giving them more or less details, and try different links and educational resources.

Consistency

Don’t ever quit! It can be a numbers game on some level, and a dedicated commitment to sales prospecting can bear a lot of fruit over time

Cold Email Outreach

Obviously, using cold email outreach is a method to generate leads and interest in your product/service. There are other ways you can use cold email outreach as well. Here are three other ways (aside from lead generation) I’ve used cold email outreach:

1. Determine Startup Viability

In today’s lean startup approach, it’s more important than ever to talk to your potential customers before you start going crazy with development and business plans. I’ve actually used this approach to determine the viability of a business idea.

2. Data Gathering

Let them know you’re performing research and planning to publish the results of the poll/questions/feedback in a future blog post on your blog. This is a very soft way of sending people to your website without directly asking for a sale.

3. Invitations

You might want to invite prospective customers to a webinar or a networking event (if they’re local). Cold email outreach is a great way to increase attendees with prospective customers.

4. SALES

One of the best ways to scale your sales is to automate your outbound lead generation. Identifying key target accounts and then using cold email can be a great way to generate conversations.

Cold Email Tips That Will Increase Response Rate

I spent the better part of a decade emailing hundreds of thousands of cold prospects, trying different tactics and strategies to see what resonated. Here’s what I found:

Increase Response Rates

1. Stop Talking About Yourself

The last thing you want to do is ruin your chances right off the bat by writing paragraphs about yourself and how great your company is. There’s a difference between logically introducing yourself and giving someone who has no idea who you are the entire spiel you give all your SQLs.

Remember that these people probably have no idea who you are. If they don’t see any value in you contacting them, chances are they aren’t going to reply. Introduce yourself politely and then start talking about them.

2. Don’t Come Off Too Sales

It’s natural to want to drop the ball right away and ask to set a meeting—after all, that’s the whole goal of cold emailing. But remember what they say: “Slow and steady wins the race.” That is also true for successful cold emailing.

Think about the solicitors who ring your doorbell, fake a two-minute conversation, and then immediately slam you with a sales pitch about a product you’ve never heard of. Whether or not it could benefit you, you’re put off by the experience.

3. The Subject Line Is Just as Important as the Message Itself

Your email is only as good as your subject line, and there are literally thousands of articles and “science-backed” evidence of subject lines that work. But the best data is what you can pull from your own past email sends.

There are so many different industries, so many different products, and so many different people that following the footsteps of someone else’s success just won’t necessarily work.

4. Do Your Research

It is actually crazy how many cold emails I’ve received with my name spelled wrong, calling me “Mr.”, not knowing my job title when it’s public information, and so on and so forth. If you were face-to-face with someone, you wouldn’t call them the wrong name or mistake them for the opposite gender without feeling like a total fool.

5. Be Respectful

Let’s say a person replies to one of your emails and you get really enthusiastic and are ready to book that meeting and close that deal, so you rush to reply, but then they all of a sudden go cold again.

You decide to reply again in a few hours—maybe they didn’t get your first email. They don’t reply to that, so you wait until the next day (it’s been 12 hours!) and email again.

See where I’m going here? As with any relationship, rushing into things and not allowing space for the other person to critically think about the situation will most likely result in the person running away, quickly.

Give them time to breathe between each touch. Would you be annoyed if the same solicitor you ignored the first time kept on ringing your doorbell during dinner for a week straight? Let the conversations flow naturally and give it time before you reach out again.

6. Make It Personal

Even if you have built the perfect cold email template, you’ll want to personalize it for each prospect, and I’m not just talking about “[[INSERT FIRST NAME]] here” personalization. Do your research and use it to your advantage.

One of their interests is college basketball? Perfect starter conversation. Their company just made the news for XYZ? Even better starter conversation.

7. Add Value

One of my all-time favorite marketing and sales professionals, Tim Riesterer of Corporate Visions, really helped me to transform the way I crafted our sales pitch for my sales team.

Too often, I see companies so excited about their product or solution that they forget that no matter how good your product/service is, unless you can get people to buy in and realize their need, your amazing product won’t make it far.

Cold emailing has been around forever and it’s not going away as long as email addresses exist. Whether you take these tips into consideration or not, remember that you’re emailing real people. We are inundated with email, yet somehow we pick out the ones that matter. Why?

B2B Email Template

Email Templates

If you have a targeted lead list and your response rate is less than 10% with personalized emails, your emails could use some work. Earlier this year a B2B company came to me for help with their emails. They offered an incredible service for the SaaS space, but weren’t very successful with their sales emails. Their response rates were below 2%.

In about a month of working together, I created a single sales email template that got them more than 16 new customers. But before I reveal the template, let’s dig into what was wrong with their previous approach.

Why their email were failing:

Too long: No one wants to read a mini eBook in an email.
Too many ideas: Although the company had an amazing product, they were highlighting too many value props in their emails, which confused readers.
Too “me me” Their emails talked way too much about why they were awesome, and listed their company’s features instead of putting it in terms of value for the customer.
Too hipster: They wanted to seem young and modern, but overly fancy marketing automation templates made their emails seem impersonal and spammy, even with customization. No one thinks they’re getting a personal email if it’s too pretty.

We’ve gone through the bad, and now it’s time for the good. Here’s the new and improved template they deployed

I have an idea that I can explain in 10 minutes that can get [company] its next 100 best customers.

The results of this email spoke for themselves:

57% open rate
21% response rate
Outcome: 16 new customers

1. Exciting subject line

The subject line is your gatekeeper, so 50% of email work should be spent crafting and testing different subject lines. You want to create an exciting but credible (not spammy or sales-y) subject that intrigues recipients.

2. Enticing offer

Give your prospects a reason to respond, and a simple call-to-action. Who wouldn’t want to “almost triple their monthly run rate?” Mentioning your past success with another client they’ve heard of makes this offer seem more realistic and attainable. Include relevant numbers and statistics to make your offer even more exciting.

3. Personal feel

This sales email has the same basic format and tone of an email you’d send to your mom or best friend. When you’re too formal, you sound stiff and like a salesperson rather than a person-person.

4. Social proof

One of your biggest barriers to selling is risk. No one wants to be the first customer and work with a company without credibility or experience, mentioning one of your customers and the results you delivered to them makes you less of a risk.

Cold Email Templates

Here are two cold email templates that you can use to create emails your prospects will want to open.

1. Email template for finding the decision maker in the company

Voodoo ox helps increase the revenues of Fortune 500 companies by marketing to Spanish-speakers. Each month we reach 25 million Spanish speakers with an audio message they must hear. We insert 30-second audio and SMS advertisements into phone calls made on calling cards.

The benefit to users is they make their call free. The benefit for our clients is they can increase store revenue by providing text message coupons. Typical redemption is 3%. You can measure results online and with store sales. Advertisements can target specific ethnic groups and geographies. Some clients include Burger King, P&G and Chili’s.

2. Email template to build rapport

Just left a quick message at the office for you. I chuckled a little bit when I got an automated email this morning from your predecessor, [NAME OF PREDECESSOR] who we worked with briefly, and before him, [OTHER FORMER COWORKER NAME], who we worked with as well.

Caroline Ostrander, a Hub Spot Fermium Service Manager, and former Business Development Representative, used this template after researching the prospect and finding a rapport building opportunity. Not only was she able to relate to the prospect regarding the new job, but she also mentioned his co-worker’s names and referenced her other attempts to help their company.