EMAIL SPECIAL .....NAIL YOUR EMAIL STRATEGY

NAIL YOUR EMAIL STRATEGY

Here are common mistakes that people make when writing email subject lines. Learn how to avoid them

Your email subject line may very well be the only part of your message that gets read, says Dmitri Leonov, cofounder of email assistant tool SaneBox. “So, it’s important to make it as easy as possible for your recipients. When people glance at their inbox, they are more likely to act on an email if the subject line entices them to do so.” There are plenty of mistakes you can make in an important email to a boss, colleague, or potential professional contact. Here are some subject lines you should never be using:

Don’t be vague

Anything too vague is going to be skipped over. Unfortunately, that’s a common mistake. Not only does a vague subject prompt the recipient to gloss over your note, it makes it difficult for people to find the email later. It’s important to make sure your email can be quickly picked up when your colleague is searching for the note in a few days or weeks. “Making the subject specific and descriptive will make it easier to find later,” Leonov says.

‘Can I offer you some free help?’

Certain words can make your email go right to the spam folder. That includes amazing, risk-free and winner. “You might think you’ve stumbled on a clever trick that no one has thought of before, but with 30 years of email and roughly 193 gazillion spams sent, almost every cheesy, tacky, tricky come-on line has been tried, and caught, by the filters of the email inboxes of the world,” Marc Cenedella, CEO of Ladders says. Even if you manage to bypass the spam filter, a clickbait kind of a subject line will probably cause your colleague or potential contact to roll their eyes and ignore your message.

No subject line

Even a bad subject line is better than no subject line.

An email with a blank subject line will likely get deleted, lost, or immediately irritate the recipient, who is forced to open the email to figure out what it’s about.

Just writing ‘Hey’

This has a similar effect to using a super-vague message as your subject line. Writing “Hello [Name]” or something of the sort is a misguided attempt at being casual, and it just comes off as annoying and inconsiderate to the person you’re messaging. Think about the recipient and imagine that your email is one of ten thousand that the person has to go through. If that were the case, would you still have written ‘Hey’ as a subject line? Probably not.

businessinsider.in

ETP27NOV18