Are You Accidentally Sabotaging Your Email List With This Cheap Trick?

Please don’t ever do this.

When you do this…

Your business will bleed customer trust like a dude with a busted artery.

It’s easy – and it can even be profitable in the short term – and that’s why people do it – but it hurts your long-term livelihood. By a lot.

And yet…

People do this all the time.

Ugh.

Cheap marketing tricks—used by shortsighted people.

So what am I talking about?

Not paying off your subject lines.

By which I mean any attempt to make a super interesting/curiosity-inducing subject line… that gets people to open your email… but which you never actually connect to, relate to, or “pay off” in your email body.

An extreme example…

Say I had an email that was selling hand-crafted bicycles.

And I used the subject line, “OMG. Trump just DIED. Story enclosed…”

…and then in your email body, you mentioned nothing about Trump. Or death. But instead you did your normal bicycle spiel. And tried to sell cool bikes.

EVERYONE would open that email.

NO ONE would buy.

And EVERYONE would feel cheated.

So NO ONE would open your emails again.

And yes, that’s an exaggeration. Some people might buy. Some people might not feel cheated, because—coincidentally—they were looking for a good deal on a hand-crafted bike. And they got that. And some people would still open your emails—even if they felt cheated after opening your Trump one.

But you WOULD lose a whole buncha trust. By not “paying off” your subject line.

And in email marketing…

Trust…

Reader joy…

Feelings of relief & gratitude that they opened your email…

These are the metrics you should be aiming to ‘max out.’ Not opens. Not click-throughs.

So NEVER cheat your reader. Not even a tiny bit. Always reward them when they open your emails. Go above and beyond. Make the email MORE interesting than they were expecting.

And your list—and your emails—and your profits—will do well.