How Your Title Can Make or Break Your Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is one of the BEST tools that you can use to grow your business on eBay, Amazon and beyond. Sending out newsletters, sales and promotions to your customers is one of the best ways to sell more products more often.

However, there's an important KEY to successful email marketing that most people overlook, and that is...

The TITLE of Your Email
In fact the way you title your email is SO important, the success of your email marketing campaign depends on it.
Why an Email Title is Important
In your eBay listings your 55 character listing title is the "map" that helps searchers find your listings in eBay's search engines.
With email marketing, your title serves one primary purpose...To get your email OPENED!
Because an email that's not opened will never be read. And an email that's not opened will be the target of the delete key. Therefore it's key to write an email title that will get your email opened and read.
The payoff for you? A great email title and newsletter will bring you more customer sales!
Motivating People to Open Your Emails
Most sellers tend to send out emails with fairly generic email titles. For example:
eBay Seller Email: Save money! Shop my eBay Store for great deals
New in my store
eBay: Great deals!
Check this out!
Winter Clearance Sale
And while there's nothing inherently wrong with these email titles, there's also nothing engaging about them either. They are all fairly generic email subject titles.
You certainly can intermix generic titles into your email campaign, but use them as the exception not the rule.
You might think that writing an intriguing email title requires a lot of work. Not so!
With the knowledge you're about to gain in the next section (and a little help from a tried and true writers tool )you'll be writing effective emails titles in no time!

5 Strategies for Writing Titles that Get Your Emails Opened
Next we're going to look at 5 different strategies you can use to get those emails opened!
These 5 kinds of email titles will engage your reader and inspire them to OPEN your email!

1. Target your email title to your customers interests. The more specific the better. If you're sending an email in which you want to promote your vintage lace linens, rather than using a generic email title such as "Check Out Our New Linens" create a more specific title such as "Introducing Our One of a Kind Vintage Lace Linens"

Generic title: Check Out Our New Linens

Targeted title: Introducing Our One of a Kind Vintage Lace Linens

As you can see, the 2nd title targets a very specific audience and arouses curiosity about the new, unique linens you've just brought in stock. Which brings us to our second strategy...

2. Arouse Curiosity. People are naturally curious. And we like having our curiosity peaked! An email title that peaks your reader's curiosity is likely to get opened.
For example...

The owner of a pet products store could write an email newsletter with a title of...

"The Top 3 Things Every Poodle Owner Must Possess..."

A seller who wants to promote flat irons (for your hair) in their email marketing newsletter might write...

"How to Turn Your Unruly Hair into a Sleek and Shiny Mane"

By using an element of curiosity in your email title people will want to click on your emails and see what's inside!
Note: Do NOT make your curiosity emails SPAMMY or MISLEADING. Curiosity alone with no substance will turn people off. If you are going to use an element of curiosity in your title, make sure you follow through on your promise and deliver the "goods" within the email content.

If you are promoting "The Top 3 Things Every Poodle Owner Must Possess..." - your email must follow through and share those top 3 things with your customer.
Misleading email titles are even worse. "Loose 150 lbs in 30 days" is simply untrue and will cause your readers to immediately delete your email.

3. Use Urgency. No one wants to miss the big "it". That one thing they wished they'd known about. Email titles that convey urgency will ensure that your customers at least give your email a quick glance! (Once they're reading you can grab them with your copy!)

Your email title can contain an element of scarcity.
For example:
"It ends tonight at midnight!"
"Only 4 vases left."
"20% off for the next 24 hours."

As with curiosity emails, urgency emails must follow through. If you're promoting a sale that ends at midnight, it MUST end at midnight. Using a sense of urgency in your emails but not backing it up by doing what you say you're going to do will cause your customers not to trust you.
And that will kill all chances of your prospect ever reading an email (or buying from you) again.
But if you DO have limited quantities of a product or the sale IS ending in 24 hours - writing an email title with a sense of urgency is a great way to promote it!

Note: Fostering a relationship with your customers that is built on trust is the best thing you can do to build a successful business! As the old saying goes "You must walk the talk."

4. Tell a story. We all love stories. It's part of human nature. Creating an email title that is a lead-in to a story can be very intriguing to your buyers.
For example:

"I Found These Beautiful Crystal Vases for You in Maine"
"The History Behind Our Hand Crafted Wall Clocks"
"Why 9 Out of 10 Customers Prefer Our New Steamer"

Then in your email continue on with the story that you started. Emphasize the human connection. Your customers want to buy from a person, not from a nameless, faceless eBay store or website.

5. Have fun. A little fun and humor in your email title can go along way. Have fun! Be creative.
This past holiday season I received an email from an eBay seller with a title that read...

"A Sale So Hot Even Santa Stopped to Shop!"
I opened this email immediately!
The Writer's Insider Secret Ideas for Email Titles

Now you may be thinking... "This sounds like a GREAT idea but I don't have a creative writing bone in my body."
Well the good news is that a copywriting degree is not required to create a clever email title!
You see examples of good email titles are all around you. In fact, your next email title may be as close as the magazine on your desk!
Writers have an insider secret for coming up with good ideas for email titles, emails, advertising copy, articles etc....
It's called a "swipe file".
A swipe file is a collection of tested and proven ads, sales letters, headlines etc. You'll use your swipe file as a springboard to write your own email titles.
Now you won't be copying the headlines directly, but rather taking bits and pieces of titles and repurposing them for your own specific niche email!
For example, this title used on a recent People Magazine "The Real Reason People Gain Weight" can be re-purposed for your pet products store:
"The Real Reason Your Pet Gains Weight" (This could be used to sell pet exercise products.)
"The Real Reason Your Dog Keeps Shedding" (This could be used to sell dog deshedders.)
When you come across an email title or headline you like, simply make a note of it in your swipe file.

Note: In case you are worrying that this is plagiarism, it's not!
Keeping a swipe file is a common practice used by advertising writers, authors, anyone who creates copy.

It's perfectly legal to take an existing heading and target it to YOUR market. And while you can't use the email title "Got Milk?" you can repurpose it to "Got Game?" "Got Candy?" "Got the Latest Shirts for Spring?" etc.
To help you find samples for your swipe file, simply take a look at the headlines on the covers of magazines in the grocery stores, tabloids, and newspapers. Look at the emails other companies send YOU.
When you look at these headlines with a fresh "eye" you'll see that most headlines today are variations of existing headlines.



Newsletters in Your Niche
Signing up to receive emails in from other online retailers in your niche is a great way to get some creative ideas about how to market products in your category.

For example, if you sell in the Home and Garden niche, sign up to receive the free email newsletters from stores like Smith and Hawken, Plow and Hearth etc.
I guarantee you'll get some GREAT marketing ideas!
Start Writing Better Email Titles Today
Email marketing is one of the fundamentals that you need in your marketing toolkit!
Lisa Suttora is the Founder/CEO of WhatDoISell.com, one of only 3 eBay Certified Providers in the categories of eBay education/consulting and product sourcing.
Lisa has been a featured speaker on three eBay Live! Product Sourcing Panels (2004-2007) and will return again this year to co-present on the top rated panel "How to Find the Products Buyers Want" at eBay Live! 2008 in Chicago.
She is the creator of the exclusive product sourcing strategies: The Product Sourcing Mindset™, Power of 10 Product Sourcing™ and Product Sourcing with Idea Hotspots™ which have helped thousands of eBay sellers of all levels find products to sell on eBay and find their niche in the eBay marketplace.
A noted trendologist, Lisa is the Product Trending Editor for Product Sourcing Radio.
Copyright (c) 2008 WhatDoISell.com, all rights reserved.
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