That was the subject of an email I received over the weekend and what a disappointment it was not to be greeted with a picture of the Cheaper by the Dozen star upon opening it. But this is not to say I was scouting for such unsavoury material, on the contrary, I was going through my email account, deleting emails I no longer needed, re-sorting my folders and occasionally pausing to investigate interesting emails with catchy subject lines.

And whilst there was the obviously emails offering all sorts of remedies for particular “dysfunctions”, I had to praise how such scammers and spammers constructed these subject lines, and whether they tested their results.

On a daily basis I’m pitching to site owners, bloggers and journalists to take a few moments out of their day to speak to me, have a look at one of my client’s sites or better still, write about one of my clients and the email subject line is of fundamental importance. If you are simply including “Link request” in your email subject then chances are your email is going to be ignored, after all, it doesn’t really call people to action like the Hilary Duff subject now does it?

But what about including something personal? Something with their name or brand name in? or a subject which sums up what you want, without mentioning links?

Of course, how you ‘pitch’ your emails will depend upon the client you’re working on behalf of, but however and whatever you are doing, be sure to test, tweak, test some more and then tweak again and then continue to tweak based on the feedback and responses you are getting.

If your link request emails aren’t working, then change them. Try to add value to the subject line, to maximise readership and ensure they respond. No one likes to have their emails deleted, especially when you taken so much time to tailor an email specifically for them, so make sure it get through!

Have you had any funny or interesting email subject lines? Can you offer any more advice? or how about an insight into the type of subject lines which grab you?
Being sure to keep it clean of course…