How To Write A Subject Line That Clicks
- Dec 3, 2021
- 5 min read
Written by: Christine Hansen, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Why you still need an email list.
You need to get people off social onto email. It’s a reliable way to communicate with people. All of your launches should be scaled to the size of your list. It’s about people being engaged. Just because you have a lot of people following doesn’t mean you’re making money.
Remember: It’s a fine balance, people will sign up to your list because you’re bribing them. Everyone is annoyed by emails. Right!?
In order for people to sign up, you need to give them something.
Three kinds of people will sign up to your email.
a. The person who is genuinely interested in you. Who enjoys the way you are and who is playing with the idea of hiring your services.
b. The tire kicker. The sceptic but it’s free, so why not.
c. The people simply want free stuff. The percentage of these people who sign up is low.
Top tip: Every 3 months I purge my list: whoever doesn’t engage, has to go, even if they’re subscribed. Even if growth is slow, the people who remain are the ones I want to work with.
Example:
I organized the Women’s Divine Sleep Summit – an interview series with experts related to the field. It was free for a certain time, people signed up via email. Then, I sold the content at the end. People couldn’t consume everything in the time it was free. But they could buy what they had missed at the end. This grew my email list loads, but six months later my list was pretty much the same as before. Here’s the thing: the people who signed up? They were not that serious because it was free. And they didn’t buy the recording and extras for $47. I did a survey on why it didn’t sell, and people said it was too expensive. Now, remember, I’m a high-end business. As you can imagine, 90% of my clients were not even on that new part of my email list.
So be clear on who you want to be and who you want to attract. Then you have to figure out what your audience is interested in. And it is ALWAYS worth signing people up to a list – even if only to figure out what they want!
Build your email from the beginning. When you sell mid to low tickets, an email list is a way to grow.
Me? My tickets to work with me privately are a minimum of $5,000. What can I say? I’m a luxury product. I don’t hard sell via email, not at the moment anyway. Still, I love the people on my list, and I get interesting feedback from them.
Your email list has return customers. That doesn’t work on social media. You need to keep them interested. Keep them safe in your email list.
Email list providers.
Do. No. Use. Gmail. It’s not professional and it will get you into trouble as you legally need an email software provider to communicate with groups of people for your business.
I also don’t recommend Mailchimp – they penalize you on the number of people you have on your list and are really difficult to use actually and get really expensive when you grow.
I do recommend MailerLite and Flodesk. They are both affordable, easy to use and get the job done. They can also handle complex funnels. Check out my referral links here and get yourself a deal:
Other good providers: Drip. Constant Contact. GetResponse. ConvertKit. Active Campaign.
All providers work pretty much the same way, it’s a drag and drop kind of thing.
Side note: what to include depends on what you’re selling. If it’s products, you need images, gifs, etc. What converts best in the beginning (not to spam), is to have just your text (plus the unsubscribe button), your address (so that your inbox sees you are a legit business and doesn’t banish you into the promo folder), and no links. If people want to reply, say just reply to this email. I don’t even use colours sometimes. Can you imagine? Mostly black text, some pink. No images. Looks more serious and businessy.
Once you have people start opening your emails, you can add images etc. because then you won’t be going into spam. Saves time too!
The first question.
In your first email, ask your recipients to reply to the email with something quick. E.g., out of ten where would you rate your fatigue? If people reply, your future email won’t go into their spam. Neat, right? Also, it’s good market research. You can see what words they're using, what problems they have.
For example, ask: What are your sleep struggles? I reply (yes, it’s actually me replying, not my assistant), and I say if they want more info to schedule a call. And ideally, that’ll be a future client. Boom.
The subject line.
Your subject line will make or break your open rate. The industry standard for health and wellness is about a 20 % open rate.
Here’s a bad subject line: “October newsletter.” For one, it’s boring. Two, it gives away the clinch of the email in the subject line, and that is always a bad idea. You want people to be intrigued. Make your subject line personal. Do NOT do clickbait! (See glossary for definition.)
Top tip: If you have Gmail, go into your promotions folder and see what works and what doesn’t.
(This is an excerpt of my book We Mean Business coming out in January 2022.)
Christine Hansen, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Christine Hansen is an award-winning business coach & consultant for online entrepreneurs who want to embrace their inner lazy, profit like a pro, and add philanthropist to their list of credentials—without ever undercharging or feeling like they have to be anyone but themselves again.
She combines hardcore strategy with lush personal development so that entrepreneurs can build and scale businesses that are still soul-aligned all the way.
With 10+ years as a sought-after TedX France and keynote speaker, Christine’s work is featured in Forbes, Business Insider, National Geographic, and more.
Having built two successful online businesses herself, Christine found out the hard way—like losing money on sketchy business investments and ruined “put your damn laptop away!” vacation moments—that most entrepreneurs are closer to burnout than they are to reaching 6-figures. (And they’re still worrying, “Am I overcharging?!”)
Christine is famous for sharing cautionary tales from the trenches, tell-it-like-it-is tips, her all-time go-to (no-brainer) tech tools she uses to get twice as much done in half the time, and gushing her best secrets to help you bust past your blind spots, be true to yourself, and breakthrough to 6-figures in under a year...all while donating to charity, taking vacations every 6 weeks, and spoiling yourself with something nice on a very regular basis.
