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Today, we’re seeing a sea change in how clients and prospects respond to information.
Everyone is swamped by the sheer volume of email and communication – people talk about drowning in communication, with the result that they’re incredibly pushed for time.
As a result, it’s harder to get clients’ and prospects’ attention and harder to keep their attention – that’s true in face-to-face meetings and it’s even truer on the phone or in writing.
So if you want to communicate effectively you have to change your approach – via email, over the phone and in person.
Getting emails opened
People today are much less likely to read anything you send them.
And if they do read it, it’s because you’ve grabbed them with a catchy subject line or headline and what you’ve sent them is short and punchy.
In fact, the most important part of any email is the subject line, followed by the first two sentences.
Subject lines need to be short and tight, getting the recipient’s attention. Ideally, they should be intriguing, so they’re prompted to click to open the email.
Remember, you either grab someone when they glance at the subject line or risk losing them entirely.
To get you started, here are some recent subject lines on my own articles that have had a good response:
- Warren Buffett on investing in a climate of fear
- Three words to blow away clients
- Hard lessons from a lost account
- Breakthrough research from the Harvard Business Review
- A small thing that made a big difference
- Four words of advice from a top producer
The three-second rule
The battle for attention doesn’t end when someone opens your email.
I recently heard an interview with a music executive who said that years ago songs would often open with an introduction and then get into the main melody several seconds later.
Today, you have three to five seconds to grab your audience’s attention or you lose them – some of the most popular songs of late grab the listener right off the top, with no introduction at all.
As an example, the song Tik Tok by Kesha set records for most downloads ever by any female artist. (You may be familiar with the song from its line “Brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack.”)
One of the reasons the song is successful is that there’s no intro at all before getting into the body of the song.
Once someone has opened your email, the first two sentences should really sell the benefit of continuing to read – and clearly identify why you’re sending them that email, why they should read it and what you’re going to do or ask them to do as a result.
And once you’re done that, try to keep everything short – short sentences, short paragraphs.
Use subheads in italics or bold to break it up.
And if it’s going to be longer than one screen so that people have to scroll down, understand that you will lose some people.
