Figure: Good Example - I'm definitely going to read this email
Use the email Subject to grab your recipient's attention. Choosing the right subject can give an email a sense of urgency or importance that choosing the wrong subject won't!
The best way of doing this is to ensure that your subject includes either an ACTION POINT (e.g. 6.30 TONIGHT! See you at The Oaks Hotel...) or a RESULT of a task you were asked to do (e.g. Here's the 5 mins. of FEEDBACK you requested from our meeting with Charles Merton). You'll note from this that including the date and time in the subject gives immediacy to the email.
If there's anything to be learnt from spammers, they know how to get your attention. Spammers use very tabloid based, or headline grabbing subjects, to try and coerce you to open that email. But don't make your email subjects tabloid-tacky, instead follow a good broadsheet paper's style of attention grabbing lines.
Never leave the subject blank! It's like writing a book and failing to give it a name!
| Bad Subject Example |
Good Subject Example |
| Database |
Northwind - Future - Meeting to get your software solution rolling, next Monday 2pm |
| Dinner |
Dinner Tonight, 6.30pm at The Oaks |
| |
|
| ?? |
BUG! SSW SQL Auditor |
| User Group |
SSW - User Group - This month needs a speaker - Call Tom Howe pronto! |
| Feedback |
SSW - SQL Deploy - The user interface feedback I promised you yesterday |
| Broker Form |
Northwind - CPF - Fix combo box on Broker Form |
Figure: Always use a descriptive email subject to make it easier to find later
Of course, we also use a structured approach for emails - especially when sending them internally.
We use the following format for the subject internally and encourage clients and external contacts to use this format as well.
[Client Name/Product Name] - [Project Name] – [Object Name/Description]
e.g. Eg. WorleyParsons – IOP – Customer.aspx - Add email address validation
The advantage of this, is that when you sort by the subject in Outlook, you get all of the emails grouped together, and it is easy to recognize the client/prduct, because the subject contains tis relevant information.
Additionally I want to be able to determine which emails are the most important. Using a meaningful subject with key words makes it easy to identify and categorize emails without actually opening them (and is also makes it easy to find emails in my Sent Items). When emails are really important I write IMPORTANT in the subject. Other emails I consider important or urgent have the following in the subject field:
Other words we use are:
- TIMESHEETS
- INVOICES
- PROSPECT
- TO-DO - for tasks pending
- FYI - information you want to keep around for a while, for yourself or for others (never for a task)
- FUTURE - ideas for the future
- IGNORE - for the rare occasion when something is requested and you really don't want to do it yet
- Product name - Registered User Support
- Product name - Pre-Sales Support
- Project name
- Client Name
Remember!
For external emails, it is acceptable to change the email subject line in certain circumstances.
For internal emails, the subject line should not be changed as it will break the threading of emails
We have a program called SSW LookOut! for Outlook to check for this rule.It will warn you if you forget to include a subject in your email.
We have a program called SSW Exchange Reporter to show statistics of emails with word "Urgent" in subjects.
Check sample report Current - All Mailboxes (By Folder)