There’s no email marketing if nobody opens your mail! Try these four proven subject line angles.

Subject lines can make or break your email marketing strategy.

They’re the most important of any email marketing campaign because if you don’t convince the reader to immediately open and read your message, it’ll likely end up in the trash!

When you’re thinking up subject lines, picture your reader in front of their computer faced with a bulging inbox.

As they glance over your subject line, what’s going to make them open it first?

For starters, nothing is more effective than using the reader’s name in the subject line to catch their attention. (You can easily set up this tried and tested technique with an email service provider like iContact.)

But your subject line must also answer the first questions on your reader’s mind:

• "So what?"
• "What’s in it for me?"
• "Why should I open your message (out of the dozens waiting for me)?"

Only a few subject lines angles actually answer these questions. We’ve tested thousands – and these four approaches have been consistent winners…

Angle #1: Make an announcement or share news

People want to be the first to find out new things – especially if your site covers a specific industry.

The news could be about your site (e.g., "Lana, we’d like your feedback") or about the topic of interest (e.g., "Michael, here’s a new back exercise").

Angle #2: Make the reader curious

You can do this by suggesting the reader is missing out on an important offer or piece of information (e.g., "Chris, are you making this common mistake?").

It’s important to leave something to the imagination when using this technique, usually by posing a question the reader can’t ignore.

Angle #3: Create a sense of urgency

You do this by either limiting time (e.g., "Mary, just three days left") or quantity (e.g., "David, last 50 copies available now").

This approach works especially well when you’re creating a follow-up mailing – and it’s a great way to motivate people to take action now! But don’t overdo it… creating a sense of urgency too often can be a bit like crying wolf, so use it carefully and sparingly.

Angle #4: Emphasize how the reader will benefit from reading your email

Out of these four angles, you’ll always be most successful if your subject lines state a clear benefit and tell the reader exactly how they’re going to save money, save time, or make their life easier by reading your email (e.g., "Christina, save $25.00 or more every time you fly").

If you can state a benefit AND create curiosity, so much the better! The key to writing benefit-laden subject lines is to consider your product or service from your customers’ point of view.

Write subject lines using these angles – particularly ones that emphasize benefits – and we guarantee you’ll dramatically increase the number of people who open and read your emails…

… Making your email marketing strategies priceless!

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Photo by Mzelle Biscotte (http://www.flickr.com/photos/biscotte/60963915/) on Flickr. Some rights reserved (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)

A friend of mine recently asked me to review the search optimization work he’d just done on his business website.

I clicked on "View Page Source" in Firefox to see the keywords he’d included in his HTML code…

… And I almost had a heart attack!

Turns out he’d included more than 60 different keywords in his keyword metatags… and most of them had no connection to what his site was actually selling.

You probably know that one thing we here at IMC preach is, "Don’t turn your site into a flea market!"

In other words, don’t try and sell a whole bunch of totally different products — such as pet supplies, jewelry, and sporting goods — on the same site, because you’ll find it absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to target your marketing efforts to the right people.

(Why? Because the people who go online to buy jewelry are NOT the same people who are searching for pet supplies or sporting goods on the Internet — and if you try to appeal to all of them at the same time, you’ll have such a mixed marketing message you won’t be able to speak to ANY of them properly.)

Well, the same principle applies to your keywords.

Whatever you do, don’t use the "flea market" approach to your search engine optimization efforts.

You have to keep your keywords as focused as possible!

When you use a keyword research tool like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker, go for the specific keyword phrases. Don’t get sucked in by big traffic numbers, thinking the more people you get to your site the better.

After all, why brag about traffic when it doesn’t turn into a sale? Say, for example, your site sells an "all natural" solution for acid stomach problems…

… You start to do your keyword research and you discover that the keyword phrase "natural remedies" has 288 daily searches — but over 2,000,000 sites competing for it.

… While the phrase, "acid reflux natural remedies" has 67 daily searches — with just over 11,000 competing sites.

Do you want to spend all your time and effort trying to optimize for the first phrase, which gets more searches — but is so general, you’ll never know how many of those searchers want to buy your stomach acid remedy?

(Not to mention the HUGE number of competitors it has!)

Or would you go for the second term, which only has 67 people searching for it — knowing those 67 people are looking for EXACTLY what you offer? (With a MUCH lower competition number to boot!)

Obviously, the second term is the one to choose!

Sure, you might get less traffic (though with over 2,000,000 competing sites, I doubt you’ll get much traffic from the first term) — but the visitors you DO get will be MUCH more likely to buy your product.

So make sure you focus your efforts on the specific keywords that describe EXACTLY what your site offers. Don’t be tempted by more general keywords with higher traffic numbers — because they’ll never send you the traffic you want.

Finally, remember to optimize each page of your site for only 2-3 keywords MAXIMUM. It’s literally impossible to optimize a web page for more than that.

That’s why it’s so important for you to do the research and find the keywords that will pull the BEST visitors to your site — not just the MOST — so you can focus all your optimization efforts on them!

We did, using a simple, but effective marketing Internet strategy: tweaking your headline!

Writing a compelling headline is an essential marketing Internet strategy for effective online selling. And by making just a few small changes, your site could be pulling drastically higher sales.

Surprised that your headline has such a huge impact?

Consider this: It takes most people just 10 seconds to decide whether they want to stay on your site a little longer or leave it forever!

That’s 10 short seconds to grab your visitors’ attention…

And a compelling headline is the most effective Internet business strategy for the job. In fact, your headline is the most important aspect of your site copy.

Let’s look at a real-world example that illustrates just how much of an impact a simple headline can make…

John Edward is a commodity broker who arranged for two-thirds bank financing on gold purchases. In other words, if you wanted to buy $10,000 worth of gold, you would only need $3,333 in cash, and the bank would finance the rest. His headline read:

"Buy gold with two-thirds bank financing!"

This headline, accompanied by good ad copy, made thousands and thousands of dollars every month. Because he was making $10,000+ a month, he was initially pretty happy and didn’t consider that he might be able to improve on his success… a HUGE MISTAKE!

John snapped out of his trance and decided to test some other headlines. He ran a few different ones, and each one pulled a little better (about 10%). However, about three weeks later, he ran this headline:

"If gold is selling at $330, send me $110,
and I will buy all you want!"

Well, this headline increased sales over 500%! All those months he was making $10,000+, he could have been making $50,000+. And this is just one example of how important a good headline can be!

There’s no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. Creating an effective headline is one marketing Internet strategy you DON’T want to ignore.

(Check out our best-selling Internet marketing course salesletter for another example of a compelling, effective headline.)

To make YOUR next headline the Internet business strategy that performs by 500% or more, make sure it includes these five proven salescopy techniques:

Try these out when you write your next headline — and see for yourself how this marketing Internet strategy can dramatically increase your sales.

If you’re currently not making ANY sales, however, you might want to go through our "site-health" checklist to identify areas of your site that need work — so you can find YOUR most important Internet marketing strategy.

It might be that you just need more site visitors. (Without traffic, your headline won’t be able to work its magic.) If that’s you, read about the absolute fastest Internet marketing strategy for getting your first visitors to your site — without breaking the bank.

You can also create your advanced strategy marketing Internet plan for attracting even MORE targeted traffic to your site.

For more information on maximizing your "headline" Internet business strategy — and to learn our foolproof 12-step formula for writing salescopy that SELLS — check out our best-selling Internet marketing course.

The "Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet" lays out our proven 8-step system for starting and growing a profitable online business on a shoestring budget… the exact system we used to generate over $60 million in online sales!

(And I’m a pretty excitable guy )

For years, I’ve wanted to provide people with a "one-stop" free online resource center that offers the strategies, tutorials, and tools they need to build their own successful Internet business.

But… because our company — The Internet Marketing Center — has grown so FAST over the past couple years, all our resources have been committed to dealing with that rapid growth, while making sure we still provide top-notch service to our customers and subscribers.

And so we haven’t been able to achieve nearly as many of the items on our "wish list" as we’ve wanted to.

Well, today is the day I get to cross a seriously HUGE item off that wish list!

… Because thanks to the after-hours efforts of my crackerjack team of content developers and web designers, I am enormously proud to introduce IMC’s brand-new Internet marketing blog. It’s absolutely STUFFED with free information you can use to make your business more powerful — and more profitable!

Here you’ll find an entire multimedia library full of tested, results-driven strategies to help you build your business. You’ll discover the latest proven SEO techniques that will flood your site with eager buyers. You’ll learn basic and advanced marketing tips from the video tutorials we’ll be posting here.

And you’ll be able to stay on top of the latest news from the Internet marketing world — so you’ll know what the big "movers and shakers" like Google, Yahoo, and eBay are doing, and how it’s going to affect your business.

… And THAT is just scratching the surface.

So what you need to do right now — in order to ensure you never miss a single strategy or hot tip — is click the button in the upper right corner of your screen that says, "subscribe."

That way, you can add an instant live feed to this site into your Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 browser, or to your personalized Google, Yahoo, and MSN pages. So whenever we post hot new strategies or late-breaking news to this site, you’ll be the first to know.

PLUS — if you haven’t already done so — make sure you sign up for our weekly newsletter, "The IMC Insider." (You can subscribe by filling in your name and email address in the orange box on the right.)

Every Monday, you’ll receive even MORE free in-depth strategies and tips that will turbo-charge your Internet marketing know-how and give you an "MBA" (a "Marketing Brain Asset" )– in no time flat!

In the meantime, feel free to browse through all the information featured in our new information portal — and please leave a comment, letting us know what you think!