Are You Wasting Your Prime Email Real Estate?

All of us have too many messages to handle. It’s a fact of our modern-day lives. If your computer screen is anything like mine, there are multiple windows and multiple tabs vying for your attention. Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Slack, calendars, Box, WordPress—I usually have all of these open. And of course, there’s my inbox with its growing number of unread messages.

Do I need to read the email that just came in? Here’s how I answer that question quickly. I keep my phone right next to my keyboard. Whenever an email comes in, it pops up on my home screen, and I can see who it’s from, the subject line, and the first few sentences. Based on that alone, I determine whether it’s worth opening.

The sender, subject line, and first few lines that pop up on your phone (the same thing that appears in your inbox before you open a message) are known as the email preheader. When sending cold emails, the content of the preheader is the most important element to consider. It’s what will convince the recipient to open your email (or dissuade them from doing so). Look at your own inbox and you’ll quickly realize that most people aren’t giving their preheaders enough thought.

To see just how influential email preheaders can be, let’s do a roleplay. For the rest of this blog, you are no longer you. You’re Heather, a CIO for a small, 140-bed community hospital. While modest in size, the hospital keeps you extremely busy, as you’re in charge of new technology, data management, security, vendor relationships, and patient experience on digital portals. I’ll still be me, but I don’t work at Maestro. Instead, we’ll pretend I’m a salesperson for a cutting-edge cybersecurity platform provider.

Action!

NONE OF YOUR EMAILS ARE FINDING ME WELL

You’re having a typical, busy workday when this email pops up on your phone. It’s a cold email, which means you have never heard of me or my company before. What does this message tell you?

The first thing you see is that it’s from Rachel Golden Smith. Great! That’s out of the way. You suspect, since you don’t recognize the name, that this is likely a sales email. Your guard is already up.

Next, from the subject, you see that I’m asking if you need any help with…um…something. It’s not at all clear what that something is. What could it be?! Are you excited to find out? No, you’re not, because you get 120 emails in your inbox per day, many of which look like this, and honestly you don’t have time to wonder what every poorly-written subject line is offering.

At least you’re able to see this much of my subject line. This version is a best-case-scenario. See, every email provider cuts off the subject line at a different place. Some less fortunate recipients of my message were only able to see, “Are you looking for some ass…” No, thank you.

I have included your name in the greeting so you know the email is indeed intended for you. People like seeing their name or their company’s name in a preheader. Then there’s, “I hope you’re doing well.” I mean, thank goodness. It’s important that people you don’t know selling who knows what are thinking good thoughts in your general direction, right? You don’t know me. Why do you care if I hope you’re doing well? The answer is you don’t.

People push back on this sometimes. Don’t we have to start our emails with a pleasantry? If you have a relationship with the person, then yes. And that pleasantry should be as personalized as possible (i.e., not “I hope you’re doing well”). Hi Allison, How did your son’s birthday party turn out? Hi Scott, That was a rough game on Sunday. These openers show that you listen to your prospects. You remember they were planning a special party. You know your shared favorite football team got slaughtered over the weekend. BUT, if you don’t know them and they don’t know you, they don’t care whether you hope they’re doing well. I promise that nobody will think, “You know, I really am in need of some general, non-specified assistance, but that person didn’t say they hope I’m well, so forget it!”

When you get to the second sentence of the preheader, you learn my name. Again. It’s already listed two lines above. No reminder is necessary.

Finally, I tell you my role. Someone I don’t know is emailing me. I don’t know why they’re emailing me. But I do know that they are a business development representative. That’s so interesting. Said no one. Ever.

MAKING THE MOST OF A SMALL SPACE

Now, let’s look at a more carefully thought-out email. It’s another busy day when this message appears.

Rachel Smith? You don’t know her. You’re immediately suspicious that this is a sales email. She’s probably about to wish you well and tell you her job title. Great.

Next comes the subject line. Cyberattackers love MRI machines? The fact that it leads with “cyberattackers” lets you know this clearly has to do with cybersecurity, which is immediately relevant to your basket of responsibilities at the hospital. When you read the subject line, it makes you think. You’ve been training your staff to avoid phishing scams and have been focused on protecting your workstations. But you haven’t given much thought to the fact that your MRI machines are connected to your network and that they haven’t had any recent security updates. Now you’re worried, which means you’re interested.

The email preheader includes your name, and then explain why all of your imaging machines could be putting your hospital in danger of a cyberattack. Wow. You need to get on the ball. You want to know more…oh, wait. Never mind. They didn’t say they hoped you were doing well. Cybersecurity be damned, you are not reading this email. See how ridiculous that sounds?

You’re interested in learning more and even feel pressed to do so given how many unprotected imaging machines are part of your network. You still don’t know much about the organization that sent this to you, but that’s when you start reading the second sentence. The Mayo Clinic… Well, if the Mayo Clinic is associated with this organization, they must be reputable. You open the email. And, scene!

THEY ALREADY KNOW YOU’RE SELLING SOMETHING

It can be hard to write your cold emails like this. After all, we would never go up to someone and start talking without introducing ourselves. But think about how people are receiving your email: in a hailstorm of other emails, all competing for their attention. It can be helpful to send cold emails to yourself to get a better idea of what the recipient sees.

It’s critical to put the bottom line up front. By this we mean touching on a current pain point or something they value at the very beginning of the email. If you can fit in some social proof (e.g., the line about the Mayo Clinic), that’s even better.

“But doesn’t that sound salesy?” We get this question a lot, and it confuses me. Why else would you be getting an email from someone you don’t know? By giving a trite pleasantry and introducing ourselves, we’re not somehow fooling people into believing we’re not selling something. By skipping the trite pleasantry and immediate introduction, however, we waste less of their time and let them know sooner that we’re worth talking to.

Room-temp regards,
Rachel

If you found this helpful, you’ll love our email workshop or self-paced training. Reach out to mastery@maestrogroup.co for more information.