By Catherine has asked me if I would do a critique of her email in the FB group.
Now I don’t normally agree to do critiques for free, but heck she got in their first so I figured “why the hell not”.
In today’s email I want to look at her subject line.
“95% of people fail at Internet marketing and one of them doesn’t HAVE to be you!”
What are your thoughts on this?
My initial thought is not bad. But read it out loud right now.
How does it sound?
It’s kind of a mouthful.
When you just read it on a screen you can’t really say why, but when you speak it out loud there’s something that definitely doesn’t sound quite right.
To connect with your audience on the best level you must write in the same way you would speak to them. Which is why it’s so important to say everything you read out loud.
But back to the subject line… something doesn’t sound quite right when we say it aloud and it’s a tad too long.
There’s also a slight lack of punch. Subject lines need to punch your readers in the face. So let’s write some variations.
Don’t Join The 95% Of Failures… Here’s How
THIS Is Why Most People Fail At Internet Marketing
5 Internet Marketing Failures
Join The Elite 5% Super Affiliates In The Next 24 Hours
Struggling Online? Here’s How To Start Succeeding [INSIDE]
Those subject lines all say pretty much the same thing as the one Catherine wrote, but they’re shorter. That means they’ll actually be seen in the inbox.
The shortness of them makes them punchier, it gives them that blow that’s going to stop your readers trawling through their inbox and make them open the email.
Depending on which one was chosen, the content of the email may need to be slightly re-written in order to fit with that subject line, but the results should improve.
Never be satisfied with your first subject line. Write what you want to say, then try and find a way to make it shorter and snappier. Keep going until you have at least five to ten of them. Take the best five and save them in a headline swipe file. Then choose the one you want to use.
Build that swipe file up and when you’re in a rush you have a go to document that contains hundreds of subject and headlines for you to immediately use.
You can check out the rest of my critique on her email in this thread.
Michael
P.S. Want some help writing your subject and headlines? Paul Clifford’s Headlnr is about the best piece of kit that I’ve seen so far.
What do you think?