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The secret to getting your emails (and newsletter and tweets…) read
Which email subject line would you click?
“This word went from rags to ruin”
or
“tatterdemalion: M-W’s Word of the Day”
I’ve subscribed to Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day email for longer than I can remember. For most of those years, the subject line of that daily email was like option B: I could scan it, see if I knew the word or was interested in reading it, and decide to click. Over the years I found I opened the emails less and less often, and usually only in response to words I wasn’t familiar with.
And then, on April 10, it switched. To option A. And I’ve been opening the emails almost every day since.
Why? Merriam-Webster managed to create a curiosity gap, a concept I first learned about in Chip and Dan Heath’s messaging masterpiece, Made to Stick. It’s that gap between what is said and what is known, that gap that makes people ask a question, or somehow seek an answer.
That’s why I couldn’t help but notice that a simple change in an email subject line radically changed my behavior with an email I’ve subscribed to for years. Suddenly it became a guessing game: What word is it? Do I know it already?
But how often, especially when we’re crafting enewsletters or other communications (heck, this applies to headlines for blog posts, tweets, etc…) do you give it all away in your headline?
No matter how effective your messaging or your well-planned communications, it can collapse at the point of choice if the message is either too opaque or gives it all away at the get-go. We experimented with this ourselves with our last newsletter. We started out by calling it “Fundraising 2010,” but ended up titling it “What you need to know to fundraise in 2010.” Longer? Yes. But more effective? We’d like to think so.
So the next time you’re writing a title for something, whether it’s your next newsletter…or next tweet…think:
What would make you open it?
Categories Digital Media, Strategy and Management
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I’ve always liked catchy titles and long titles. I remember the first time one of my tweets ended up on Twitter’s home page in the Top Tweets. Oh the elation! I couldn’t help but think, “I must have said something good!” Unless it’s a picker that just chooses random tweets…… oh, well. TY for the curiosity gap tip!