Good Subjects Grab Attention

How much e-mail is flooding your In Box every day? If you’re like the average business executive, you’re probably seeing between 40 and 50. Some of the mail is urgent and requires immediate attention. Most of it probably shouldn’t have been sent to you in the first place.

To help save yourself some time, you filter your e-mail. You go through your In Box and, based on the sender and the subject, you decide what gets read and what gets deleted. In other words, as a reader, the subject helps you decide whether the e-mail is important or not.

This is why as an e-mail writer, your own subjects require a little extra time and thought to ensure that your message gets the consideration it deserves. E-mail with uninviting, spam-like subjects from unfamiliar writers are more likely to be trashed than read. Catching and holding your reader’s attention begins with writing a good subject.

To do this, follow these five helpful guidelines.

First, make your subject brief. A good, all-inclusive subject takes no more than seven or eight words at most. Don’t be cryptic, however. One-word subjects rarely give a clue about content.

Second, make your subject self-explanatory. Your reader should have no question about the content of your e-mail message after reading your subject. That’s why incomplete, ambiguous subjects like “Your phone call” or “Thursday’s meeting” should be avoided. Short phrases combining a subject and a verb often do the trick.

Third, make your subject engaging. Use action words. Be clever. Think of the headlines in newspapers that are most likely to grab your attention. The more attention you attract with your subject, the more certain your message will be read.

Fourth, make your subject honest. Don’t express urgency if the message is low priority. If everything you send is urgent, then, after a while, nothing is urgent at all. Remember the boy who cried wolf?

Finally, make your subject correct. Begin with a capital letter and use correct punctuation if necessary. Your subject will be the first text your reader sees from your message, and first impressions last longest. Nothing in your subject should tell your reader that you are careless in your writing.

Brief, self-explanatory, engaging, honest and correct. A well-written subject that grips your e-mail reader at the outset will keep your reader attached to the end.