Waiting for a response to your emails? They’re probably not even being opened.  Discover the three headings that will massively increase the likelihood of you having your emails being read and the one error that nearly everyone makes that will guarantee they won’t be read.

Video and Transcript

The average number of emails that employees get in their inbox per day is a hundred and twenty-one so that’s an awful lot of emails fighting for attention and priority.

I’m going to show you three ways in which you can increase the likelihood of your emails being opened and read.

Today i’m going to talk you through three small adjustments that you need to make to your email headings to increase the likelihood of your emails actually being clicked so here is the first way.

Make sure that the heading of your email incites or includes a benefit for the reader. This comes from Andy Bounds’ ‘The Snowball Effect’. For example, let’s just say I need your timesheet so that I can pay you. I could put ‘Timesheet’ in the heading or I could say ‘Get paid on time’. ‘Get paid on time’ is definitely more likely to be opened. It includes a benefit for the reader.

Benefit: that’s the first technique that you can actually include in your email headings.

The second is intrigue. So many people put ‘fyi’ in the title and it doesn’t get opened and the reason is because it’s boring. You open up the email: there’s something to click on but you can’t be bothered. You might star it or save it: you probably won’t open it (or the attachment, that is). But if you were to put something like – in the heading – ‘I think you’ll love Page Seven’, you are intriguing the reader to open the email. So intrigue is the second way in which you can adjust the headings to maximize the likelihood of them being clicked and opened.

The third is being specific. Now, if we’ve got this many emails in our inbox we really can’t be bothered to work out what it’s about: should we prioritize it etc. What you really need to do is just be specific and take all the guesswork out of it. For example, ‘Our meeting at three’, or ‘The documents you sent me’ or ‘The proposal adjustments’. Whatever it is, make sure that it’s specific to take the guess work out

In summary, we have: Benefit, Intrigue and Specificity and these will definitely increase the likelihood of your emails not being buried or put aside but clicked and responded to. For more tips and tools to make you into a Communication Ninja click the link below for your weekly guides.