Why Your Email Aren't Read Or Actioned!

It's 2018 not 1998 yet our email subject headings often still look like this:

'Meeting', 'Budgets' 'Re:' or even worse 'FW:Re' - familiar?

Not only is it all a little biz lazy but, with the distractions and over-communicating that surround us nowadays we need to fight much harder to get our emails to stand-out in crowded inboxes and in a compelling, non-gimmicky way.

If we are not particularly senior, or don't have great influence with others it is even harder to get people to open, read and act upon what we are communicating - So what to do instead?

The answer is what I call benefit-driven titling - and you can use them with email subject lines, Word docs, PowerPoint slides, proposals and just about anything else where you are looking to convince others, get their interest or get people to take action. Titles need to answer the question: What's in it for me to open and read this email/doc? If there isn't a great benefit to me outside of legal compliance, politics or threats then what's the point? Influencing others can be about getting others to love what we are proposing or do something to avoid something they would hate to happen! Here's an easy format to use for titles in the future:

Formal: Informal (the what's in it for them/benefit bit) - The beauty of this is that it doesn't look gimmicky or slogany to the other person. You start with what you would normally write (the Formal bit) and follow with the informal benefit! This nicely hedges things between those who are used to and don't mind very formal titles and those who are crying out for a bit of straight talking!

For example:

Meeting on Thu: How we can get budgets sorted by Tuesday

Client rationalisation proposal: More revenue from less clients

Survey return: The main way to get your voice heard this autumn

Device Refresh Programme: Speeding your PCs up!

We are so used to seeing boring, formal, jargon-riddled titles that it can be a refreshing change to see something that has made an attempt to actually tell me 'why', 'what's in it for me', 'why should I read this?'. With email, it affords the receiver/reader a bit more respect than the awful 'Re' and can help boost the sender's credibility.

Have a go at it tomorrow: no-one will ever criticise you for communicating the benefits of something in a plain-English way!

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