MyPunchblog

Anyone who has worked with me for an extended period of time knows I have a handful of email related pet peeves — and one that has been bothering me a lot recently is what people choose to write as an email subject.

I get a lot of email everyday. I’m trying to learn the methodology of touching an email only once and immediately handling it, but invariably some emails linger in my inbox (sometimes for days, and sometimes for weeks). Numerous times in a day, I’ll scan my inbox either to tackle a specific issue or delete an email from something I’ve recently completed. I often read my email via my cell phone (I’m a fan of the Palm Treo) which makes the readability of email subjects even more important. I’m pretty fast at scanning my inbox, but without a clear email subject I can really get slowed down.

I have many pet peeves about how people write email subjects, but it primarily boils down to two main items:

Pet Peeve #1: A subject that doesn’t have enough information which causes me to have to open the email to find out the basics of what it is about. Here are a few of the examples that are currently in my inbox:

1. “Questions”
2. “Info”
3. “Intro”
4. “Help”

Pet Peeve #2: Email subjects that have WAY too much information and are WAY too long. Here are a few examples:

1. ‘Hi Matt, Your thoughts on a partnership with XXXXX company and how you could work with them.”
2. “Been a while. How is Punchbowl doing and have you seen our latest newsletter?”

So with that in mind, I present to you a 10 point checklist for writing good email subjects:

1. Your subject should be more than one word, but no more than seven (4-5 words is ideal)
2. If you’re a company, start with the name of your company (e.g. Punchbowl: Follow-up)
3. If it’s an intro to someone, include the person’s name in the subject (e.g. Intro to Matt Douglas or Bill meet Jane)
4. If it’s a meeting, include the date in the subject (e.g. Punchbowl meeting 6/17/08)
5. Do anything you can to make it not generic. (e.g. “Hey Matt” is a really bad subject)
6. If you use a SPAM filter, make sure your subject doesn’t get filled with SPAM tags (e.g. SPAM-LOW) 
7. If the email has bounced around before, remove the Re: Re: Re: or Fwd:Re: that litters the subject line 
8. Use proper capitalization: it’s easier to read 
9. If the subject is a question, re-write it
10. If the subject has exclamation points, take them out

I believe that writing a good email subject is important: it’s how you present yourself and it influences the quality of the response from the recipient. I’ve certainly noticed that I tend to respond more quickly and thoroughly to people who send me an email that has a clear subject line (perhaps that’s because the content of the email is usually more clear too).

So please… before you send me an email, take a moment to think about the subject line before sending it. And if I sent you this blog post as a response to an email you sent me, allow me to apologize for my pedantic behavior. Yes, I know that email subjects are not the most important topic in the world — but give it a try. My inbox will thank you for it.

This entry was posted on June 15, 2008 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.