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Power of the email subject line – Think of it like a tweet

This is the age of communication overload and  I am sure everyone will appreciate your kindness in giving people some of their time back. The time spent in opening and email and finding out what the email is about.  Why not think your email is twitter and start writing your email subject lines and your email itself like Twitter.

Here are some of my thoughts on email subject lines and I am not the first to write about this – see the other pioneers mentioned below :

• Your email is your subject line :  If your message is short why not just add it to the subject line and forget about the body. Have you ever done that?
• Customize the message every time : have you been part of a email trail that goes on and on and no one bothers to change the subject line? You may be saving others time by customizing the subject line to indicate what the conversation is about?
• Categorize the email subject lines.
The late Marc Orchant suggested these tags for the work place
• RR: Reply requested
• RRAL: Reply Requested At Leisure
• URG: Urgent
• NRN: No Reply Necessary
• RAL: Read At Leisure
• IMP: Important (but not requiring action)
• INT: Internal (generally used for policy or procedure announcements)
• SAI: Strategic Awareness Info (industry news—read as time permits)
• FYI: For Your Information (no action required)
Marc Orchant’s Manifesto : Work is Broken: Here’s How We Fix It can be downloaded at ChangeThis
Chris Brogan wrote a good post about email Subject lines and my response in the comment section was :
• ACT : need an answer ASAP
• ARTICLE INFO: Something that I saw online read at your leisure.
• INFO : CCing you on something that u have a choice to read or ignore
• BREAKING NEWS: All hell is breaking loose we need to talk
• JOKE: Sending you a PJ please do not read in a meeting.

Usually ACT and Joke gets me the quickest response

Twitter trains you very well for composing short messages.  Can we use that to make our emails wordefficient? What about thank you messages ? Thanking people is common courtesy yet if your message is delivered to someone who is already struggling with 443 unread messages maybe the way to do it is to make the Subject line – Thanks, Steve Good job ! If you want to get away from email you can sign up for Jared Goranik’s Awayfind solution.

There are many others thinking of the email efficiency, here are a few sites  I am aware of – if you know more please comment here :

City College Norwich : An Email manifesto

Chris Brogan: Writing More Effective Email

Tim Ferris : The Low-Information Diet: How to Eliminate E-Mail Overload & Triple Productivity in 24 Hours

Change This : Tyranny of email

Have you read the  The Gilbert Email Manifesto (GEM) ” which said  ”Email is more important than my web site!” and published in April 10, 2001, wow that seems so long ago.

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