Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, February, 2006

After the From line, which we covered last month, the next factor is the Subject line. The best subject lines create curiosity, have some clue about what's inside, and avoid even a whiff of junkmail.

If you have a pre-existing relationship, it should convey that as well. Which is why my subject lines for these newsletters include not only a brief capsule of the content, but follow that with a colon and "Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip."

The number of characters count, too-which is why I've switched to putting the newsletter name at the end. If something's going to be truncated, let it be that. Some systems won't show any more than 50 characters in a subject line.

What if you are writing the e-mail equivalent of a cold call? You haven't ever corresponded and the person hasn't heard of you. I encounter this a lot when I'm pitching media people. So I establish context right away. If, for instance, I'm trying to get myself on a radio or TV show, my subject line starts with "Guest Available:" After the colon, a few words about what I'd like to talk about, so the full subject might read "Guest Available: Ethical Business Actually Works Better." It's succinct, hopefully intriguing, and truthful to the contents that follow.

Some others I've used that worked (e.g., got a personal response)-these are actual examples straight from my Out box in the last few weeks:

* Linda, background for our interview on 1/24, 7:55 a.m. PST (to a radio host once the interview is scheduled)
* Stefi, Liz Burton thought you could answer my question
* Dear Mr. Papoutsy--Saw Your Article on the 5 Simple Questions for Ethics
* Review Copy Request: Lean and Green (to a publicist at a publishing company)
* Thank you for asking about our marketing/copywriting services (my standard follow-up to telephone or e-mail client inquiries)

You'll notice that three of these five use the person's name--but do so in way that nobody could mistake for a mailmerge. And in fact they aren't mailmerged; these are all individual letters. One of them references a known person who referred me (it happened to be her mother), one an article that my prospect had written, and the third, an event that we'd scheduled together (by telephone, as it happens). In one of these cases had I emailed before or asked to be whitelisted.

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.