How To Write Email Subject Lines That Get Opened By Mike Brooks Nuclear Chowder Marketing, LLC
Table Of Contents Table Of Contents... 2 Lesson 1... 3 How this works... 3 Lesson 2... 6 This method ROCKS!... 6 Lesson 3... 9 I've got something for you... 9 Lesson 4... 11 Will you try this?... 11 Lesson 5... 12 Only 4 more left... 12 Lesson 6... 13 How to write the perfect subject... 13 Lesson 7... 15 Try this one... 15 Lesson 8... 16 Shhhh, this one's a secret... 16 Lesson 9... 17 Last one... 17
Lesson 1 How this works First of all, I want to thank you for purchasing How To Write Email Subject Lines That Get Opened part of the full Email Marketing Demystified program. If you want access to the full EMD training, you can learn more here. Unadvertised Bonus As a member of this training program, you're invited to join (for free) a special and private Facebook group. Only members who register for this ecourse have access. This is a place you can ask questions, get feedback and share your knowledge. This is normally something I'd charge at least $47 a month for. You get in for no cost. At the end of this first lesson I will tell you more about the group. Here's how to get access to the group: First, you need to 'Friend' request me on Facebook. I am Mike S Brooks on Facebook. If you go to Facebook.com/mikesbrooks it will go to my profile. Then, send me an email and let me know you'd like access so I can add you. Send to mikebrooks@nuclearchowder.com What to expect In this course you hold I am going to show you how to craft killer subject lines that no one can avoid opening. I am also going to send these to you in small chunks over the next few days. I want to make sure you re successful so anything I can do over and above to get you there, I will. Here's the way this training works. Read this entire document through. Read it more than once. Save it somewhere and every time you craft an email to send to your list, come back and scan it for the perfect headline. You will also receive regular training through email. One email is one lesson. So make sure to keep your eyes peeled for emails from me. It's a good idea to put me in your contacts so your email system doesn't send them to the spam folder.
The training is delivered in easily digestible and actionable chunks. Each email will have one method you can use to create your subject lines with samples and templates you can use. Why this is so important Nothing happens in email marketing until your email actually gets opened. Unfortunately an alarming amount of businesses send emails that hardly anyone on their list even opens. So this training will show you how to easily get people opening your emails by writing killer subject lines. Over the next few days, you're going to receive these powerful lessons. Make sure to check your emails. The subject line of each lesson will contain "Email Marketing Demystified - Lesson X". Now before we get started I am assuming you know a couple of things: 1. The money is in the list 2. Email marketing is the most effective marketing at a ridiculously low cost 3. Your email list is yours. You own it. 4. Delivery of your email is not at the discretion of Google, Facebook or any other platform's whims and agendas 5. The money is in the list (yes, I said that twice for dramatic effect) 6. People still and always will read emails 7. Email marketing can greatly enhance your social media efforts Now, let's get started with today's lesson. You have a split second to grab them The very first thing you have to do when you send an email is get it opened. This is the only action you should want. You have only a split second to grab attention and get the reader to take this action. People scan their emails, just as they do with everything else like the postal mail, social media, etc. They look down at the sender. If they recognize your name and like you, they 'might' open it. The next thing they will look at is the subject. They're scanning quickly to figure out if your email is worthy of their time. The reason most businesses have dismal open rates is they write terrible subject lines.
The subject is a headline A headline is supposed to grab the reader's attention and pique their curiosity enough to get them to read on. The subject line is the headline of your email. If it grabs them, they will open. Expert marketers spend the majority of time crafting a headline. That's because they know how important it is. That without doing it right, you don't stand a chance. Just like people sort their mail over the garbage can, they sift through subject lines over the trash. It's time to put on our marketing hat. When you write your next subject line, you need to follow these important rules: Keep it as short as you can. Pique their curiosity Dangle a carrot (know what they want and use their desires) Give them an emotionally strong reason to continue Your homework Start paying attention to subject lines that get you to open. Pay attention to headlines everywhere that get you to continue reading or take an action. Keep a swipe file of these that you can use and experiment with. Go over to the private Facebook group and share some that you have put in your swipe file and check out what others are sharing. You'll get some great ideas here. Need help with any of this? Head over to the Facebook page and post your questions.
Lesson 2 This method ROCKS! Yesterday you learned that a subject is a headline. And it is so important to give a lot of thought to crafting a proper headline for your subject. One thing to remember is that ultimately you must track and measure what works and what doesn't. I am going to provide you with the knowledge and templates. But you have to also understand your audience well enough to know what they will respond to, experiment and then adjust based on results. Be in it for the long game. Your swipe file Most great marketers (copywriters) keep a swipe file. Yesterday I asked you to start building your own swipe file. Today I want to dig deeper. Your swipe file can be a notebook, spreadsheet, Word document or whatever you need it to be. But when you want ideas for headlines, start with your headline swipe file and grab ideas from there. Every time I see a great headline, I add it to my swipe file. After I use it, I go back to my swipe file and write down what my conversion/open rate was. I also add any new iterations of that headline and their open rates as I tweak and test. Sometimes I will make over 10 new headlines by tweaking one I started with. Your swipe file should become your best friend. The bigger your swipe file gets the better it will serve you. I have different sections of my swipe file. I have a section for headlines. A section for benefit driven bullet points. A section for calls to action. Any part of a sales letter (a website is just really a sales letter by the way) has a section in my swipe files. I also keep full ads in their own section. I keep stats on ones I use and I edit and update the file often. It is my most important living breathing tool. Let's talk open rates An open rate is simply the percentage of people that opened your email. An acceptable open rate will vary from niche to niche. It will also vary depending on the type of list you send to.
I have my lists segmented. Segments may be: cold prospects, warm leads, newsletter readers, customers, former customers, etc. How you break this out depends upon your business needs. My cold prospect list will have a lower open rate than my warm prospects. My customer list may have close to a 100% open rate. There are a lot of different benchmarks out there for open rates. Some specific to an industry. According to many experts, in 2014 you can expect a 17% to 28% open rate. Most people get below 20% regardless of industry. I tend to agree this is the norm. If you're doing really well, you will be on the 28% side. My goal is to push you over 30% and beyond. My favorite method - The Hook All of the examples below use The Hook method. This method uses a powerful trigger: curiosity. People see this short hook and just have to know what it's about. You can do the same thing. Just take a look at what your email is about and use one of these or your own that will trigger the reader's curiosity. Make sure that the email body copy supports the headline. For example if you use "Bad News" but the email then is all about kittens and sunshine, you will piss off the reader and lose their trust. Look at my subject line for this email. It begins with, "This method ROCKS!" I use The Hook method all the time and really believe it rocks. Look at my open rates below and tell me it doesn't. Make sure the connection between subject and email is apparent to the reader. If you are a mortgage lender you might use "Bad News" for an email about rates going up. In the email you may present a solution that is actually good news but rates going up certainly would be bad news. By the way, bad news almost always has a higher open rate than good news. Swipes for you To get you started with your swipe file, I am going to share some of my most recent subjects that use The Hook and their open rate. These emails were all to my cold prospect list. Bad News! (Embarrassing admission) 36% Good news! 35%
Yes! - 38% This really works - 36% Check this out - 33% Unreal - 37% You can make your subject lines longer if you'd like. But this method loves short and sweet. When done right, you will force the reader to want to know what you're talking about. If your email content is good, they will be glad they did and continue opening your stuff. Your homework Write out some subjects using the Hook Method. Go over to the private Facebook group and share what you ve done. You'll get some great feedback and ideas there. Need help with any of this? Head over to the Facebook page and post your questions.
Lesson 3 I've got something for you Before we begin I want to talk about how I personally open my emails. Sad but true If I sent an email with Sad but true, for example, in the subject line, I can guarantee everyone will open it. Without even looking at my stats I know that this is just the way it goes. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the quality. Some people will think these lessons are too confusing. Others won't agree with me. Others will love it. Others will agree but think they still know better. Of the people who love the content, agree with every word I say and count the seconds until my emails arrive, only a percentage will ever open the emails. Only subject line craftsmanship will make that percentage as high as possible. The big mistake Most people give all the information away in the subject line. If I send you a subject line with "Lesson 3" as the subject, you know exactly what my email is about. You can now make a decision to open, delete, save for later based on having a preconceived notion of what is in the email. Here's how this thought process goes: 1. I see Mike sent me another lesson in his email course 2. I know, like and trust Mike 3. I want to read what Mike sends me 4. But I am still behind from lesson 1 5. Plus I am super busy today 6. I'll just leave it and come back to it tomorrow Then tomorrow turns into another tomorrow. It gets buried in the inbox and forgotten about even though this person wanted to open it. This is just the way it goes no matter how awesome the people on your list think you are. You always have to speak to their curiosity and desire to know more. If they think they know what you'll be talking about, it then becomes a toss up as to whether they will open the email or not.
As we continue through this course you will see that all these methods play on people's primal need to know what's behind the curtain. We humans are curious by nature. So remember to always embed curiosity into every subject line for any method. The Offer method In this method you have something for your reader. Everyone loves getting stuff. Look at the subject that got you to open this. "I've got something for you". This is using the Offer method. And of course, you need to open up to find out what it is. Here are some examples with my open rates: Will You Join Me For Lunch? My Treat! 42% Can I buy you a cup of coffee? 37% New ebook for you - 38% What offers can you make to your list to get them wanting to know what's inside your email? Your homework What offer headlines can you make? List as many as you can. Share them over on the Email Marketing Demystified Facebook group for help and feedback!
Lesson 4 Will you try this? Welcome to lesson 4. Hope you're starting to see the endless possibilities for great subject lines you can use to get your open rates to the next level. Let's get right into this method. The Burning Question method Ask a question and get an answer. What do you think? Will you try this method? It works great. People can't stop themselves from answering a question. Look at my subject from today: "Will you try this?" It asks a question while still using the curiosity trigger. What is it I want you to try? I also keep them very personal. As if they are from a friend. Here's some samples and their open rates: Will You Join Me For Lunch? My Treat! 42% Got a second? - 46% Can I buy you a cup of coffee? 37% Will you help? - 36% Want to see the way I do this? - 34% Your homework Work on questions you can ask that will work for your email list. And as always go over to the Email Marketing Demystified Facebook group to share, ask questions and get feedback.
Lesson 5 Only 4 more left There are only 4 more lessons left in the subject line series of Email Marketing Demystified. Hope you've been enjoying this training. The idea of this lesson is to create a sense that your reader might be missing something. This the lesson title: Only 4 more left. The Too Late method It is amazing how powerful a trigger this is. People seem to always want something they can't have. Have you ever gone window shopping and seen something you like but thought maybe some day? But then you see there are only 2 left. Or the sale ends in a day. Or some other tactic to create urgency. I went to Kmart this weekend and saw that they had marked way down their outdoor furniture. It is early September so there's not much time left of summer. We won't be using outdoor furniture much longer. But the big sign that said "Clearance Sale" and had a price that was 75% off got my attention. But the fact there was only one of the items left that I wanted pushed me off the fence. Had it not been for those two things, I would have waited until the spring to get those items. The scarcity of only 1 left in stock and the sale price about to end hooked me. I suddenly needed to have them now before it was too late. There are a lot of ways to use this in your subject lines. Here are two examples I have recently used and their open rates. Don't miss this - 34% Last chance - 37% Your homework List out as many subjects using this method that you can. The more scarcity you can insert, the better. Then share them on the Email Marketing Demystified Facebook group. And by the way, normally I'd charge at least $47 a month to be a part of a group like this. The reason I decided to give this to you as a bonus is that I really want you to get everything you need to succeed here.
Lesson 6 How to write the perfect subject As we pass into the home stretch of the Email Marketing Demystified Subject Line ecourse I just want to congratulate you. My hope is that you get everything you need from this training series to take your email marketing to the next level. So great job for sticking with this! This lesson is about a powerful template I've used for many years to craft headlines and subject lines. This is a tool you can use over and over to generate not just great subject lines, but also great blog titles, social media posts, headlines for virtually any marketing you need. The How To method When people go to Google they are more often than not looking for help. They want to know how to do something. When they ask you a question, I bet that many times they are asking you how to do something. Remember the headline I used to convince you to register for this ecourse? It started with How To. The fact is that people want help. They want their problems solved. So when you use the How To method, you are crafting a simple solution to their problem. Just take a problem your audience might have and put the solution next to how to. Like for example my subject line from this email: "How to write the perfect subject line". Examples: How to get out of debt How to fix a leaky faucet How to save for your kid's college tuition How to sell more Just think of ways to solve the problems your customers have. Think about the questions you are asked. One of the questions I get asked a lot is "How do I get more people to open my emails?" Even If One of the ways you can add rocket fuel to your subject line is using "Even If" after the problem. The template is How To/Even If.
How To Write Subject Lines That No One Can Avoid Opening Even If You're Brand New To Email Marketing What comes after the even if is a possible objection. I know that a common objection is people don't think they can do it because they don't know anything about that online marketing stuff. How to get out of debt even if you're terrible with money How to fix a leaky faucet even if you are bad with tools How to save for your kid's college tuition even if your kid is already in high school How to sell more even if you hate selling This is a great little technique. I've used it for going on 10 years and it works amazingly well. These do tend to get a little long. So the focus will be on the How To part. The Even If may get cutoff. Your homework You've had a lot of practice the past few days (if you've done all the homework). Now try to craft some How To style subjects. These are super powerful when you get the hang of it. And as I end in every lesson, make sure to go to the Email Marketing Demystified Facebook group
Lesson 7 Try this one Have you been putting these methods into practice? I hope so. And if you've come this far and are having success, a great way to say thanks is to send me your feedback. I'd love to hear how you're doing with this. The Big List method People seem to love lists. I confess, I do too. I always fall for a good list. This, like the How To method, tends to make slightly longer subject lines. But with work you can make really strong subject lines that pull high open rates. Just remember to keep the first 5 words the strongest part of the subject line. Make every word earn its place. 10 ways to lower your debt 7 tips to get more Facebook fans 4 tricks to lower your taxes 8 exercises to drop belly fat Who could avoid finding out what any of those tips are? Like the How To method, think about those frequently asked questions you get asked. What are the problems you solve for your customers? Give them a list of ways to solve the problem And remember to always make sure the email content supports the subject line. If your subject is "7 ways to get more leads" and you don't provide 7 tips for doing that, they will never open another email from you. Your homework Go ahead and crank out some list subject lines. Powerful stuff! Make sure to share, ask questions and help out other members over on the Email Marketing Demystified Facebook group We're almost done. Two more to go. The next method is one I almost wasn't going to share with you... stay tuned.
Lesson 8 Shhhh, this one's a secret Who doesn't want to hear a secret? As soon as someone tells me they have a secret, I immediately want to know what it is. Another little primal trigger we humans can't help ourselves with. The Secret method This is going to seem a little over the top to some people. I will tell you that I have a hard time convincing people to use this. Some feel it seems too sensational and even sleazy to use this. But the fact is... it works. It gets people to pay attention. But also, each one of us has things we know about our expertise that is not common knowledge to your customers. That's why they count on you. You've got the answer to their problems. To them, it's a secret. The secret to reducing debt The secret to Facebook success The secret to losing weight I've got a secret A secret revealed You can even combine them with the Big List method: 5 secrets to beautiful skin 4 secrets to losing weight Your Homework What secrets do you have that you can reveal to your prospects and customers? List as many as you can and then share on the Email Marketing Demystified Facebook group. One more lesson to go. See you on the next one as we wrap things up.
Lesson 9 Last one Congrats! You made it. I hope you've enjoyed these and learned a ton. More importantly, I hope you double, triple, quadruple your open rates! I hope they are through the roof and you make an absolute ton more money from this wonderful tool called email marketing. Remember that at the end of the day, taking action and measuring your results is what is going to make things go. If you don't try the things I've taught you, nothing will change. Send out an email and then see what your open rate is. Then make some judgments based on the numbers and repeat the process. Did you do all the homework? I hope you did. There is no better way to learn than to take action! And for your final homework, I'd love to know what you liked about the course, how it helped and what you'd like to see next. Can you can go back to the Email Marketing Demystified Facebook group and let me know? Would you like more help with this? Would you like to talk about this one on one and get your specific questions answered? Would you like to see how we can help you short cut your online marketing? Shoot me an email or call me at 203-889-4533 to set an appointment with me. This concludes Email Marketing Demystified - Subject Lines. Stay tuned for more trainings in the Email Marketing series and other great topics. Want to see something specific covered? Let me know.