When I pose this question to Worktalk Email Effectiveness program participants, responses run from five seconds to one minute. This is sobering. Remember that long email you struggled to compose? Odds are that it was skimmed for a few seconds before the reader moved on to the next priority.

Given the fleeting opportunity to engage your readers to open your emails, you must take advantage of the subject line. This is the first path to persuading readers to open your email and give it their time.

Here are five tips from the Worktalk Email training that will help you write subject lines that do the job.

1. Use the Three P’s to hook the reader’s attention.

The Three Ps are purpose, person, and point. Before you write, ask yourself, “What is my purpose? Am I informing, persuading, or requesting?” Then, analyze your reader and their inner questions. “What person is reading this, and what does that person need to know?” Finally, clarify your point before you start to write. This will prevent you from rambling.

So, if you’re writing to request a meeting that will enable you to confirm the budget for an important project, you might say:

SUBJECT: Available to meet to finalize the Q3 2024 budget?

This touches on your purpose – requesting a meeting, your person – who wants to finalize the budget, and your point – the basic request.

2. Change the subject line when you change the subject.

People rely on subject lines to help them keep track of various topics. If you change the topic three emails down in an email chain, you will be hard-pressed to pick up the thread. Just start a new email or subject line when you change the subject. Remember, it’s free!

3. Never leave the subject line blank.

In my email training, I have met many people who automatically delete emails with blank subject lines. Either they figure it is spam, or they are so annoyed that the writer did not respect them enough to take a few moments to state the subject of the email that they are just not interested.

That position may be extreme, but leaving the subject line is a mistake because it squanders your opportunity to hook your reader’s attention.

4. Be straightforward, not witty or cute.

The days of cute subject lines are over. Cute, witty emails are likely to backfire. Readers are overwhelmed with emails and just want to know what you want from them..

So rather than writing:

SUBJECT: Hey! Gotta minute?

Follow the next tip…

5. Give the essential message in the subject line.

Using the Three P’s, you will succeed at writing your essential message that aligns with your reader’s interests.

Are you requesting action? Say so, and specify the action. Are you sharing a topic of crucial interest? State it in terms that will resonate with your reader. Do you want to confirm a lunch date? Just state your point.

Sharing the essential message in the subject line enables your reader to make an informed decision about whether and when to open your email.

Call Worktalk When:

• Companies lose customers due to poor messaging from sales and customer service teams;
• Clients complain about communication from professional service firms’ staff members;
• Employees need to humanize the output of AI-assisted writing programs so it doesn’t sound fake;
• Employees need help developing the right prompts for AI-assisted writing programs to generate more effective outputs;
• Employees waste time repeatedly emailing one another because their messages are unclear.

Contact Worktalk today. Click here.

Click here to read more blog posts on emails.

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Does Every Email Need a Subject Line? Yes, Every Reader Appreciates a Heads-Up About the Content of Your Email

The post 5 Tips for Getting Your Emails Opened appeared first on Worktalk.

In a recent business writing training, Bud, the tech-genius company founder, seethed at the end of the conference table. He’d been roped into the training by colleagues who were sick of getting incomprehensible emails from him. When the CEO brought me in to work with the team, he told me, “Nobody knows what the heck Bud is talking about!”

No business person can afford to be misunderstood. Communication is essential to your success if you want to widen your circle of business contacts, strengthen your relationships or deal with customers. And communication takes place when the reader or listener understands your message.

Reviewing Bud’s emails to colleagues made it apparent that he loved to flood readers with technical details even if the minutia didn’t answer the readers’ questions. Shooting off technical fireworks seemed more important to him than making himself understood.

Then I asked his teammates a riveting question: “When you receive an email that contains technical information you don’t understand, what do you do?” One by one, they replied:

“I tune out.”

“I delete it.”

“I lose interest.”

The group included his head of sales, his customer service manager, the CEO and his head of operations. They may have been attempting to understand Bud’s messages, but he wasn’t getting through to them. When he heard the results of his communication style directly from them, his face fell.

At that moment, Bud became teachable.

What did I teach Bud and his colleagues that helped them make themselves understood?

Intend to Communicate.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and realized that they weren’t really talking to you? Instead, they were talking to themselves in your presence. Not a very satisfying experience, was it? The same happens in writing–writers flood a page or computer screen with words but do not consciously intend to touch their readers. It may sound woo-woo, but your readers can feel it when you do not focus your intentions on them.

The more finely you hone your intentions, the more likely you will be understood. A great way to do this is to ask yourself what result you want your message to produce. Do you want the reader to receive information? To do something? To act or think differently? By following the advice in Stephen Covey’s classic book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind,” you will learn to harness the power of intention.

Don’t over-inform.

Readers tune out excess information. Be like the CIA: Only tell people what they need to know to do their job. Top executives might need to know the big picture–but it’s unlikely they will need the details, too. So limit yourself to what’s necessary.

Particularly when a writer knows a lot, the impulse to bless the reader with a wealth of data is intense. But most people are only interested in information when it relates directly to their needs and interests. In Bud’s case, he responded to simple requests with a flood of technical details that didn’t resolve questions. The result was that people tuned him out.

Focus on being clear, not smart.

If you truly want to sound smart, be clear. When readers feel that a writer is trying to blind them with his brilliance, they are unimpressed. Moreover, employing terminology, ideas and syntax that people don’t comprehend makes readers feel stupid. No one responds well to that!

If your reader doesn’t understand you, you might as well have been watching Netflix instead of writing. To enable your readers to grasp your message, speak their language, write shorter sentences, use familiar words and provide the critical information that will show why your message matters.

Keep your messages as simple as possible without becoming simplistic.

Refining your communication skills means more than figuring out how to avoid dangling participles. The key to touching your readers’ hearts and minds is to give them the knowledge they want and need in language they can understand. Concentrate on how you want your reader to respond to you.

At the end of our writing training series, Bud’s demeanor had changed from defensive resistance to reflective engagement. He was excited about his new skills, and his team was hopeful that his data-drenched, roundabout emails were a thing of the past.

The post 3 Ways to Make People Understand Your Writing appeared first on Worktalk.