Everyday we get tons of email.  And if you are like me, everyday you send out tons of email.  A while back I noticed that a good portion of my emails were not getting found in the cluttered in-boxs of the individuals I was sending to.  It wasn’t a matter that the emails weren’t getting delivered, it was that they were getting overlooked in the clutter.

I started paying attention to what emails I recieved that seemed to get my attention most and compared that to the emails I was sending out.  When you check your email, it all starts out with the Subject line.  The Subject that catches you’re attention first always gets reviewed.  At work, what was catching my attention was subject lines that related to me, my company or my industry.  Looking at my subject lines I was simply putting in the subject line what my email was about.  For example, if sending a proposal to a client for a website, it might look like this:

Subject: Requested Proposal

Not very eye catching.  However, if I was sending this proposal to ABC Company, I found I had better read rates by listing the subject line this way:

Subject: ABC Company – Requested Proposal – NetSource Technologies

I have first grabbed their attention with the name of their company (”Hey, that’s me”), followed that with a description of what the email is about (”Hey, there’s that proposal I wanted”), followed by the name of my company (”Hey, that’s the firm I’ve been talking to about a website”) – all with only 6 words.  I’m finding that my emails are getting responded to quicker and with less follow up effort since I started using this new naming convention.

For what it’s worth.