Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

Marketers: Brace yourself for stiffer competition this year in the e-mail marketing world.

The December 8, 2008 issue of BtoB Magazine confirmed (not surprisingly, I might add) that marketers plan to beef up their e-mail marketing efforts during 2009.

Of the folks surveyed, nearly half (43.5%) say they’re keeping budgets intact, but they’re shifting dollars away from more traditional tactics like print, direct mail, and events. Almost 75% say they’ll increase online spending, and more specifically, 68.3% say they’ll put more money towards e-mail marketing this coming year.

What this means for the average person is a more cluttered Inbox, and as their Inbox grows, they’ll naturally become more aggressive at cleaning out the clutter.

Marketers who want to avoid the trash heap (and who doesn’t have this for a goal?!) will need to step up their efforts to capture the recipient’s attention.

If you’re still sending out e-newsletters with the same bland subject line (e.g. “XYZ Widgets Newsletter: 2009-01-05”), stop! You’re providing zero information that helps your readers make an educated decision on whether to keep your e-mail or toss it.

Here’s four quick tips to help you build attention-grabbing subject lines that will make your readers want to open your e-mail.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #1: Front load your subject lines with powerful words.

While active sentences are easier to absorb, they often times push your most important words to the tail end of the sentence.

When it comes to subject lines, passive sentences  are not tabu. Flip the subject and object around so that key words and phrases are the very first words your reader will see.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #2: Focus on their pains and problems.

Stop talking about you: your newsletter, your weekly summary, your upcoming release, etc., and start demonstrating how you can help your readers with their problems.

And I do mean problems… not opportunities for improvement.

People want to do a lot of things, but they’re more likely to act upon the issues that are hurting them, or causing them great discomfort.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #3: Ask a question.

One way to accomplish this is to ask a question that gets the reader thinking about their pain, e.g.:

• Feel powerless against your larger competitors?
• Are you leaving money on the table?
• How much is your IP worth?
• Confused about…?

You get the idea.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #4: Be specific.

Watered down, vague subject lines will catch nobody.

“7 tips to find profitable partners,” “4-step plan to land enterprise deals,” or “11 common online marketing missteps that waste money” tells the reader exactly what they can expect to find when they open your e-mail.

Note that all three examples use concrete numbers. That’s because people respond to them! One word of caution, though: Don’t try to force your numbers to be nice round numbers like 10. If you have six great tips to help your reader stop wasting money on VAR partners that don’t deliver, don’t pollute the list with another four tips that are marginal at best.

In my next post on January 20th, I’ll share 5 additional e-mail marketing tips.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.