After his previous post on "Best Email Submissions", Kyle is sharing with us more great content on his Things That Make Your Emails Worse!
"Things you think make your emails better... but actually make your emails worse:
Putting first names in subject lines.
This may have worked a few years ago, but the data is very clear that it’s a loser now. This is an example of what I call “fake personalization” – doing the bare minimum to create the appearance of a personal message.
Using people’s full titles.
You’d never start a sentence with “As the SVP of Marketing at Clari...” in real life. Doing it in an email makes you sound like a robot. And... it’s an obvious token that triggers people’s mental spam filter (h/t to Lavender for that li’l phrase).
“I hope this finds you well!”
People still do this! I know it sounds polite and you may think you’re lowering people’s guards. But what you’re really doing it wasting precious “preview line” real estate – the text they see *before* they open your email. Open rates go down, response rates go down. (Note: This is specific to cold email. If you have a real relationship with someone, this may be more appropriate.)
Trying to sound smart.
Big words are not better words. Simplicity wins the day. Optimize for clarity, not for cleverness and I promise you’ll have more success.
What else would you put on this list?
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