Why Email Subject Lines Don’t Matter

One of the main ways to get your email opened, if you listen to the experts, is to make sure you use a good headline. What makes a good headline is open to discussion. What it comes down to is creating headline that creates enough interest to get your emails opened.

In a way, that makes a lot of sense. If you open your email box and scan to your messages, it can be a bit confusing, especially if you have a lot of emails coming in every day. An interesting headline could catch your attention and get you to open email.

There are a couple things to consider when it comes to headlines. It's important to realize the your headline is making a promise. It is telling your reader that they should open the email because it contains valuable information. Where can all go wrong is if the headline has nothing to do with what you have to say in your email.

I've seen this over and over again, from marketers who are supposedly at the top of their game. They will continually send emails with headlines that promised something that is never delivered. I don't know about you, but these are the emails that are deleted before they get opened.

Well I think email headlines are a good indicator of how well your message will be received, I want to go out on a limb here and say that headlines don't matter. I know that goes against what the mainstream marketers are saying. But I disagree.

I think what makes people want to open email messages is who the message is from. Once I'm on someone's email list and I have read a few of their messages, I get a good feel for whether or not they are useful or not. If I like what I've been reading, I don't really care what the headline is. I look at who sent the email, at this from somebody I like, I'm going to open it every time.

The guys and gals who send me useless messages get deleted on site. It doesn't matter what their headline is, or how often they email, I'm not going to respond or open their emails.

So let me say it again.

Email subject lines, or email headlines, whatever you want to call them, aren't the most important thing you need to do to have your email read. What's more important is you have something useful to say every time you send a message.

I realize you can't hit a homerun every time, but if you're entertaining and useful and are providing good information, you'll have a good list. A list of subscribers who actually open and read your email messages. Because if they don't open and read your messages, they can't read about your offers in the training that your offering them. They'll start ignoring you and you'll end up sending out a ton of messages that never get read.

So your assignment is to write good email messages that people want to read.