We are all guilty of it, we treat email as a casual, flicked-off communication that our colleagues and friends will understand. The body content is bad enough but the subject line can be completely irrelevant.

How many times have you received an email that is the reply to a reply to a reply of an email on a completely different subject? Among close-knit groups it doesn't matter, but when you are trying to connect with a community of interest, clients or subscribers, its a completely different matter.

The folks at Network for Good are focused on that subject line again

How many times have you decided to read an email (or not) based on the subject line alone? The subject line is your first chance to make an impression. Pack your subject lines with details about what's inside, emphasizing why the reader should take a few extra seconds to see what's in the body of the message.

• Change It Every Time.
  Your subject line should change with every edition. Don't waste space with dates, edition numbers, sender information, etc.
• Lean toward personal value.
  For example, "Where Your Best Friends Will Be Dancing All Night Long" will work better than "Register for Our All-Night Dance-a-thon Fundraiser." (I must be getting old, but that just sounds cheesy to me, we can all do better than that)
• Describe the Candy, Not the Wrapper.
  Tell us what goodies are inside the email, not about the packaging. Forgo wrappers like "Parenting Workshops" when your readers are craving candy like "Dinnertime and Bedtime Routines that Preserve Your Sanity."
• Keep It Short.
  Somewhere around 35 characters seems to be the ideal now. You can play with subject line length and see what works for you, but do try to keep it between 20 and 60 characters tops.

I'd like to add another two,

1. Don't announce that this is "The organisation x monthly email newsletter", your "From line should tell them who sent it and, frankly, we don't care that its your newlstter, wnat we care about is whether it has anything sueful in it.
2. If there are multiple items in the newsletter, liost the headlines for each of them in that part of the email that will be visible in the "Preview" pane, then use the headline to link to the actual content further down the page. If you don't know how to do that, you probably shouldn't send any more email newsletters till you learn how.

Before an email can be read, it has to be opened. Make your subject line so irresistible, your supporters won't be able to help themselves.

Do you send email newsletters? What's your method for getting your recipients to open them?

If you receive email newsletters, who produces the one that you are most likely to open? Give them, a plug in the comments.

BIG question. Do we have to send regular informational emails anyway? Woudl you rather get an email once a month even if it doesn't have anything really interesting in it? Or would you rather hear fromn the same organisation only when there is really something solid to talk about?

Hidden agenda questions.

• Are we, as organisations, afraid that our supporters will forget that we exist?
• Do we really only use the emails as a way to regularly tap the recipients for donations?
• How well does that work?

Comments open for any and all of that, and ay other take on the topic you have.

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The first email tool I ever used was Eudora and, despite trying several others along the way, it still is. Sadly for me, it is no longer being produced and my final version was last updated 3 years ago and now taken over by Thunderbird. Many of us use Outlook and hopefully have local folders for storing and accessing emails while we are offline or if the exchange server is not available.

The wisdom of a client that can manage your email on your own machine becomes clearer when we see this happening. Another Gmail Outage Blocks E-Mail for Millions of Users [Read more →]

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It used to be that snazzy email campaigns to your membership and supporters was an expensive proposition. One organisation I work with has been quoted $10,000 annually to set up and manage a monthly email newsletter. Not even close.

But lately I've been working with an online tool that does pretty much everything you could want with an email campaign tool and is priced right.

Up to six newsletters a month and up to 100 subscriber is free, up to 500 subscribers is US$10 a month and up to 2,500 subscribers is US$30 a month. Those are prices I can believe in. Check out MailChimp.com [Read more →]

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The number of connections we are creating online can be very satisfying. We forge new relationships, business and otherwise, we enable our networks and organisations to perform ever more important activities ever more cheaply, faster and from disparate locations.

But are we becoming too dependent on too many factors beyond our control? And what happens when something unusual happens? Can the Internet Handle a Crisis? [Read more →]

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A few years ago I shared a platform with a bit of a guru called Gerry McGovern and we came down on different sides of this debate. Looks like he has now come a bit further to my side. Nobody cares about your website

When I receive an automated marketing email addressing me by my first name, I don’t go weak at the knees: “Oh, the software knows my first name! It knows my name!” Has anyone tested to see whether these so-called personalization techniques are more likely to alienate a customer than impress them?

Anyway, back to the Air New Zealand marketing email that I don’t remember signing up to. (I’ve had pretty good experiences flying with Air New Zealand by the way.) “Welcome to the second edition of our new look monthly email.” Two fatal mistakes in the first sentence. Welcome? Hello? What’s with the welcome? I don’t want your welcome. If I want anything from you it’s your deals, and hot deals at that. When you think of your customer, imagine Tony Soprano. Nothing personal, just business. Cut the crap. Get straight to the point.

So Air New Zealand has got a new look monthly email! Stop the presses!!!

[...] And you’d be amazed at the amount of websites that want to give you this sort of hard news. Why, I was at the Starwood Preferred Guest website recently wanting to check what they offered in Athens when I was confronted with content that told me that the site was “redesigned and ready to help you plan your adventures. Take a few minutes to customize your account profile to ensure you take advantage of all that our new site has to offer.”

And you know what, I didn’t take those few minutes. That sounded like a real pain to me. I just wanted to quickly check availability and see if there were any good deals. I had zero interest in designs, redesigns, bee-designs, knee-designs or we-designs. (Which are what most redesigns really are; done more because of internal egos than because of external needs.)

I just wanted the website to work. How thoughtless, cruel and uncaring of me. But then I’m only a customer

I completely agree. In fact I go further, the real reason for our being on opposite side of the debate I mentioned above.

Nobody cares about your content and nobody is interested in your information. Nobody comes to your website "to find out more about you", never.

They come to your website for one thing, Help.

Some years back, Colmar Brunton did some great research on why so many people verbally or physically attacked the staff at Social Welfare and their conclusion was that the people were there because they were in trouble of some kind, they were already embarrassed, under stress and probably angry about some actual or perceived injustice.

They needed help and they hated asking for help when every cultural norm we have says we should be self reliant.

Under those circumstances it takes almost nothing to trigger an outburst. But here's another factor, we almost never even seek information until we actually need it.

This is especially true for things we don't do often. I catch a train into town a couple of times a month, so I have no idea what the timetable are. When I need to know the timetable I go to the Maxx website and look it up. It better work fast and be easy to use or I get annoyed because Maxx, and you, need to understand that Gerry and I (and most of your site users) don't have time to waste.

And like Gerry, I wont spend time "customising your website" but what I will do is take advantage of highly visible search options that say "click to search and save this journey" so that next time I load the site it already knows which places I travel between and how I prefer to travel.

Then, when I come back to the site I want to see my "saved journeys" down the left side with a button beside each one which says "next available time" or something like that.

A website is a tool for performing a task, know what that task is for your users and how it looks from their perspective, then provide it. Simple really.

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