More people open your emails when you apply this simple technique!

Just a quick email to ask…

…what email titles do you tend to use?

The reason I ask: the only aim of an email’s title is to entice someone to open it.

But most titles don’t, do they? When you check your inbox in a minute, you’ll see what I mean. I imagine you’ll see some of these beauties in there:

• FYI
• Update
• Misc
• RE
• [blank]

So, what’s better?

Well, anything that works.

Here are some that get quick responses:

• ‘Just a quick email to ask…’ – this almost always works. It did with you today!
• ‘Just a quick question about [topic X]…’ – add the topic if it will encourage the reader to open it
• ‘As requested, here’s [content]’ – adding the word “requested” tells the reader they asked for it. So they’re more likely to open it
• ‘A quick favour’ – people like to be asked to help
• ‘Some advice? – they also like to be asked to give advice. And, if needed, you can add the topic – ‘Some advice about [X]?’
• Where your email contains a benefit to the reader, include the benefit in the title – ‘Helping ensure you get paid this month’; ‘Let’s get [X] off our To Do Lists. How about this…?’
• ‘Topic X – content Y’ – ideal for emails that you/the reader might want to refer to again later. For example: ‘New sales initiative – actions arising from our meeting on 15 March’

Or, of course, you could just ring them up. It’s amazing how often that works better than an email ever could.

Action point

You know the email you’re about to send now you’ve finished reading this Tip? Well, change its title, so it gets opened immediately.

You’ll be surprised how this simple technique makes a huge difference.


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Written by NativeEnglish

Native English Spain is dedicated to make learning English simple, fun and affordable for Spanish people.