You can spend countless hours creating the perfect piece of internal communications to share with your employees, but if you then send it in an email with a mediocre subject line, the majority of the staff probably will not read it.
Since the average employee receives 121 emails every day, you need to find a way to immediately capture their attention with the email. Here is how to do so by creating a subject line that stands out in a full inbox.
Provide Urgency
One of the worst things that you can do is create a subject line that seems like it can be postponed until later. If someone ignores an email with plans to look at it later on in the day, then chances are that they will never come back to it.
To make employees really stop and pay attention to a piece of communication, it needs to have a subject line with a strong sense of urgency. The best way to do this is to include urgent language such as the words “now” and “today”, which suggest that it’s important they look at it sooner rather than later.
Short and Sweet
It can sometimes be hard to try and condense an in-depth piece of communication down to only a few words. However, if you are interested in maximizing the number of employees that read the communication it is vital to do so.
It is recommended that a subject line should be around 40 characters long in order to receive the maximum amount of views. This is often only six to eight words that you have to try and provide a glimpse of what the email contains without overwhelming or boring the employees.
Personalize It
No one enjoys being treated as just another number, which is why generic subject lines never tend to perform quite as well as personalized ones. In fact, just by adding some minor personalization to a subject line, it can help to improve the open rate by as much as 14 percent.
When someone sees an email with their name on it, they are much more likely to stop and pay attention. By simply adding someone's name at the beginning of the subject line, you give the email the personal touch that it needs to significantly improve its open rate.
Invoke Emotions
Emotions are one of the most powerful marketing tools that companies have, which is why it is so important that you include words that evoke feelings of emotion in your subject lines. If someone reads a subject line and immediately feels either happy or sad, they are much more likely to open the email and read more about the topic. Try using puns to spark laughter, or a countdown to get them excited about an upcoming holiday.
These tips should help you create a subject line that is able to capture the attention of your employees each and every time.
