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winning strategies

Effective emailing starts with a clear subject line and a concise message.

In Elmore Leonard’s Hollywood caper Get Shorty, Harry Zimm, a B-list producer, shares the response he got from a literary agent when he asked what type of writing pays best. The response: ransom notes.

No doubt, if Harry had asked about the most important thing a businessperson can write, the response would be “email subject lines.” That’s because, for the time-pressed (and who isn’t?), well-written subject lines boost productivity by enabling recipients to quickly triage email, decide what needs to be opened and answered immediately, what can be ignored and deleted, and what should be filed or archived.

Here are five simple rules for getting the most from your email subject lines:

1. Write specific subject lines

A subject line should preview the message, be specific and give enough information for the recipient to take one of these actions:

• Open immediately
• Open later
• Archive/file
• Delete

Here’s a subject line that does the job: “Notes on July 24 call re: ORS Editorial Style Guide.” The subject line tells when (July 24), what (call) and what about (ORS Editorial Style Guide). Depending on the project time frame, you’d open the email immediately, read it later or file it in a project folder. But many subject lines aren’t as helpful. Here’s a subject line that might be in your inbox: “Yesterday’s phone call.” It might take a while to conjure up which phone call this email refers to, and the subject line is too vague to help you make an action decision. What about yesterday’s phone call? Does the email contain notes, a follow-up, a question about the call or an answer to a question raised during the call?

In this case, the email titled “Yesterday’s phone call” contained biographical information on the company founder, Tim Parker. This was information for a back-burner project, so he filed it in the appropriate project folder.


2. Write retrievable subject lines

Chances are, by the time Tim Parker’s bio moves to the front burner, the project file contains a dozen or so emails with subject lines such as:

• “Today’s meeting”
• “Yesterday’s phone call”
• “For your review”
• “Progress report”
• “Contact information”
• “Got your message”

So which email includes the bio? Most likely, you’ll have to open and skim several emails until you hit the right one. The subject line “Bio for Tim Parker” would have easily led you to the right message.


3. Rewrite inadequate subject lines before replying, forwarding or archiving

The loss of productivity caused by a poor or misleading subject line is magnified by forwarding or replying to an email without rewriting the subject line. Multiply your annoyance and time wasted by the number of people the email is sent to, and/or the number of times the poor subject line is reused. Then do your colleagues a favor: Take a few seconds to rewrite the subject line so it previews and reflects the email’s content.

You can do yourself a favor, too, by rewriting a poor subject line before you file or archive the email. Think about how much easier it will be to retrieve the information you need when the subject line is “Bio for Tim Parker” instead of “Yesterday’s phone call.”

In some instances, you might want to preserve the old subject line by putting it in brackets after the new subject line: “Bio for Tim Parker [Yesterday’s phone call],” just in case a colleague calls and says, “I sent you that information on July 24, and the subject line was ‘Yesterday’s phone call.’”

In today’s email-driven business world, each email you send competes for attention with dozens or maybe hundreds of others for the recipient’s attention. Well-written subject lines that preview the contents, are specific and emphasize benefits ensure that your messages will be welcomed, opened and acted on.


4. Write subject lines that feature benefits

People decide whether to open a message based on the “from” field and subject line. So if the recipient doesn’t know you, your subject line has to work doubly hard. One way to write a heavy-duty subject line is to focus on benefits. “We can show you how to increase your profits by 20 percent” is more likely to get your email opened than “We have a new service we’d like you to know about.”


5. Change the subject line when the topic changes

Sometimes an email has a great subject line that has nothing to do with the topic of the email. This happens frequently when a sender takes an old email and clicks reply without rewriting the subject line to reflect the current topic.

For example, an email with the subject line “Request for info on training options” was reused by the sender for emails about his vacation schedule, a personnel change, and a case study for an entirely different project. Talk about retrieval nightmares!

Not every email exchange warrants rewriting the subject line as the topic changes. If the exchange will end after two or three emails over a few hours, don’t change the subject line even if the topic changes—it’s not worth your time. But if the exchange is going to last a few days, go to several recipients and be archived for later retrieval, change the subject line to reflect the email’s current topic.
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MARILYNNE RUDICK and LESLIE O’FLAHAVAN are partners at E-Write (ewriteonline.com), a Washington, D.C.–area consulting firm that writes and teaches people to write for online readers. They are also the authors of Clear, Correct, Concise Email: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents.