How to write a subject line that gets your email read

Good morning. Had another great breakfast and coffee reading my copy of the Gary Halbert Swipe Files, Volume 1. And one of the things, like I mentioned yesterday, that so many of the things that I used today were things that I learned from Gary Halbert and from Claude Hopkins all the way back. But one of the most important things that I learned from Gary was that I wasn't talking about it in this context, but I've applied it to emails. And so, you know, 1997 emails were just kind of getting started. So that wasn't the key thing, but the. But letters were the thing. And I mentioned yesterday that Gary had the big impact on me in the fact of speaking to one person at a time.

Well, one of the things that Gary is very famous for is talking about the idea that people sort their mail over the garbage can and they sort it into the A pile and the B pile. And the A pile are things that are personal, that look important, that are just for them, they want to read them, things they know know what they are. The B pile are things that are clearly junk mail or not for them or things that are going to get thrown away. And your goal, of course, is to get your email or get your letter in the A pile. And so when Gary created the provocation of what if I could only mail one letter and it had to get an order or I was going to be beheaded?

That's a pretty, you know, he put aside all of the standard wisdom that was already accepted in direct mail. He's thinking, you know, the people would say mail bulk mail because you save so much money on the thing. Use indicia because it's automated and it's easier to do. Put teaser copy on your envelope, use a window envelope because it's, you can save on the printing on the envelopes, all of those things. And he realized, I would not stake my life on those things on getting in the B pile. I need to make sure that I'm in the A pile because in order for somebody to place an order, they have to read your letter and in order for them to read your letter, they have to open your letter and get your letter.

And so when he reasoned it through that if his life depended on it, he wouldn't risk sending bulk mail that wouldn't get forwarded or wouldn't return to him to let him know that it didn't get through. So first class mail. And he'd use real stamps, probably two or three stamps and maybe on a little bit crooked so that it feels like it was from one person. He wouldn't put any logos or teaser copy on the outside of the envelope because he doesn't want to risk his life on somebody mistakenly thinking this is just junk mail. So he decided he would just put the return address on the in the corner card.

He would type or hand address the address on the envelope and that would give it the highest chance of getting delivered. And if it wasn't, you know, there's a change of address, it would get forwarded or it would come back to him so he knows he needs to re reach out to them. But it would get to their mailbox and it would survive the A pile, B pile sorting. Now if we fast forward to email, I don't, we don't usually get a lot of mail and it's unfortunate because it's such a great vehicle, it's such a great thing to have something in the mail. But we do get a ton of emails, lots and lots of emails.

Even if we have multiple accounts, nobody is. Everybody's reading their email in one stream. I've got three or four email accounts, but when I open up my iPhone, which is where I get 95% of all my emails first come my first glance at them is in my iPhone, even though I have different things. And everybody's clever in having a burner account or something, a subscription account where they put their, you know, they sign up for newsletters or download lead magnets or whatever. We're all reading them in the same feed, nobody's individually going to different accounts. So that's the, the thing is that you've got that one feed.

And here's the secret to getting your email opened. That's the only job of the subject line. It's the envelope to your direct mail. And so it's important if you take that same approach of an email that appears like it's one email to one person. Now if you think about it, emails that are personal that you're most likely to open are emails that come from your friends or people that you know, I was teased, you know, your mom has a hundred percent open rate and if you look your iPhone or your Android, if they still make those, is you look at your email feed. Here's a really easy way to demonstrate this for you is scroll through your emails and look for the last email that was only for you, a one of one email that was just for you from somebody that you know.

And what you're going to find is that that email has a very different subject line approach than the emails above and below it from marketers trying to use best practices of kind of, you know, tricking or cajoling or exciting you into opening the email. You know, your, I would say your mom. If you look at emails from your mom, you can imagine that she is, you know, standing there with a, with a label maker typing out the label that you would put on the file folder where you'll put this email to reference it later. And I think that those label maker subject lines overtly clear.

Not in any way kind of vague or tricky or anything. Sometimes the best thing is to be overtly clear. Now, back in 1997, and especially in 1998, we were starting to use email to fill our real estate marketing events. And the winning subject line, the best subject line that I ever wrote for those simply said Real Estate Marketing Workshop. And if we were going to Orlando, I would put Orlando Real Estate Marketing Workshop. And that was a overtly clear way to draw in exactly the people that we wanted. There's a fun example of this that my friend Ross, who's also a fan of Gary Halbert, he's an amazing copywriter himself.

He, we were joking because his aunt inadvertently sent the most perfect email. She sent an email to her, the neighbor that said Irish stew in the subject line. And then all the email said was, hi, Nancy, Ross is Ross has agreed to make an authentic Irish stew for dinner on Thursday night. Would you and Bob like to join us? And that it was almost as if like she had marketing training. But it was the most innocently perfect email communication. And you know, almost the reason that he pointed it out to me is because it models exactly what I do. If I'm doing a marketing workshop, many subject lines that I send out say Orlando Marketing Workshop or Leads and Conversion Zoom Workshop.

And very overtly clear on what it is. So here's the assignment for you. If you want to test this, you'll find that the open rates that you'll get on emails that are overtly clear and seem like just charge neutral that are. Here's what this is about. Giving people a contextual frame for it will have an amazing difference. So look in your phone, look in your, your email stream and just maybe look at the last four or six emails that you got that were personally addressed just to you. And you'll notice patterns, you'll notice the way that these, that these work. So if you're going to do email marketing, you got to get the emails opened.

That's the first job. And then tomorrow, let's talk about how to get your email replied to.

Every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen, onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people onto that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business, I'm all for it.

So this Friday at 1pm, I'm going to do for the first time a 50 minute profit finder workshop. And you're going to join me live on Zoom. And we're going to go through a 50 minute exercise. Bring your pen, bring a notebook or piece of paper and I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there.

But I'm going to show you where to look for it. So it's free. It's for you. It's Friday. At 1pm this Friday. Just watch.

Just go to 50minuteprofitfinder.com and I'll get you all the details and hopefully you can join us then. Friday 1:00pm.