Episode #97: Write Click-Worthy Email Subject Lines For Your Next Toy Pitch
Listen Now
Tap Play Below or Listen On iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts
It’s toy pitching season and e-mail is one of the best ways to make connections and capture people’s attention. However, business people receive tons of e-mails each day. Some of them receive 16 promotional emails per hour (or more!) How can you cut through the noise? With a great headline!
In this episode I share my best practices for an amazing e-mail headline that will grab attention. The information I share with you is based on my own research and experience. I’ll tell you all about the “four U’s” to make your headline really pop, and give you real life examples of my most popular and successful e-mail headlines.
Each headline example that I share in this episode has an open rate of 30% or more. Plus, if you’re a member of my podcast insider’s club, you can download a file of my top 10 most successful e-mail headlines. These tips can help you to get people to open your e-mails, and get your ideas in front of the right person!
-
Description text goes here
-
[00:00:00] Azhelle Wade: You are listening to making it in the toy industry episode number 97.
[00:00:04] Well, Hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of the toy coach podcast, making it in the toy industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. Well it's pitch season toy people and the one thing I know for sure everyone is looking for visibility right now. Whether you've got a toy invention that you're almost ready to pitch or a toy product that's ready to sell. These days, you're most likely doing a lot of that pitching and follow up pitching via email. And email subject lines are the particular topic for today's episode. Okay. Here is how this episode is going to breakdown.
[00:01:07] First, we're going to start off with the importance of email. We'll get into stats and all that good stuff. Then we're going to move on to the structure of a good email headline, and finally working around. And I'm going to share with you a few headlines for my highest converting emails. And we'll see how you can apply that to your toy pitch, whether you're pitching a product or whether you're pitching an invention. By the end of this episode, you will know how to right click worthy email's subject lines for your next toy pitch. Ready? Let's dive in.
[00:01:48] Alright to start this all off. I want to talk about the importance of email. In general. Email is an extremely powerful tool that I see vastly underused and misused by well, I was going to say inventors and entrepreneurs, but honestly, even corporate toy companies are guilty of not taking full advantage of the power of email marketing. I've got to admit, even when I worked as VP of Brandon product at a toy company, I didn't spend enough of my time focusing on email marketing, but knowing what I know now, boy, would I have done things differently.
[00:02:29] Now a question I get pretty often is this, Azhelle how do I get my start? If I have no connections in the industry at all, or a gel, how do I get my product featured in blogs and gift guides for free? The short end. Introduce yourself with email. Back in the day, getting visibility for your product or your business was so hard. It was really all about having the right connections. There was a bit of a bottleneck all of the power rested with major TV stations, newspapers, high ticket billboard ads. But today social media put the power back in the hands of the people.
[00:03:13] At the time that this episode aired there are over 2 million podcasts on the web. 37 million YouTube channels and over 600 million blogs, which means there are over 639 million potential opportunities for you to get your product featured and seen by millions of people across the world.
[00:03:39] Now, whether you're looking to connect with a popular mommy blogger or the hottest toy influencer on Tik TOK or the inventor relations rapid Hasbro. There's one common denominator that most, every modern professional has in common today and that my friend is email. So I did a little digging because, you know, I love some stats and according to campaignmonitor.com, approximately 128 business emails are sent and received by professionals per day. That is 16 emails per hour if you're breaking it down like an eight hour Workday. And you can believe that corporate toy professionals have way more to do than just answering emails all day. Now that number is an average over about 4 billion active email accounts worldwide.
[00:04:41] And I know from personal experience so that number is accurate for me today, but it could fluctuate even higher than that whenever I'm in the midst of a product development life cycle. Like back when I worked with toys R us and I know email inboxes of higher ups, that go way over that number. Now, those numbers are just business emails. The website where I pulled this data campaignmonitor.com also has a separate stat for consumer emails and that number approximately 117 consumer emails are sent and received per day per person. So if you are an independent toy entrepreneur or a retailer or an inventor, trying to form a connection and sell via email, How do you stand out?
[00:05:36] Well, that's why we're going to dive into the topic of how to structure a good email headline. Now I'm going to start this off by just recommending a book to you. It's a book that I love it is called the art of click. I have mentioned it on this podcast before. I model a great deal of my subject lines after the lessons taught in this book and I'm going to teach the biggest lesson that I took away from this book right here right now one more time. And this is the subject line formula of the 4 U's. This is actually taught to help you write article titles, but I translated it to email and change the way I use some of the use of bit and that's what I'm going to teach you right now. So your email subject lines should be this 4 U's urgent, useful, unique and ultra specific. Okay.
[00:06:38] Now the book, the art of click teaches. That formula as an article headline formula, as I said, but you can use it as an email subject line instead. And I have to say, I think it works just as well for email may be even better and here's why. People today are busy. They're busy getting places, answering texts and just filtering information before they let it sink in as to whether or not it's important. So let's dive in to the four U's let's break them apart a little bit piece by piece, starting with urgent.
[00:07:16] Now, when your email subject line includes a word that is urgent, it is a word that encourages the reader to take action now. Depending on who your email's going to and what the purpose of the email is you should really temper that urgency. For example, you wouldn't email a toy executive with the email subject, a toy idea you need right now, although that does sound compelling, it's not the right style for the type of email you're sending. And if you don't deliver that exact value in that email, and it's really not a toy they need now you'll lose massive amounts of credibility and they may never open your email again. But what you can do is identify what's important to your reader. And in that particular situation with a company, looking to review ideas, what's important to them is first dibs.
[00:08:16] Although I companies want first dibs on a new idea. So if you can translate urgency into a possibility of being first, then maybe you've got a win. Now the second U in the four U's is useful. And with useful, I like to use my emails to convey the value right off the bat. When you're making an email that's useful, it should be really clear to the reader in the subject, what your email is going to be about. So an example of this is being really clear on the category of your product. If you have a plush doll line and you're emailing your potential customer base about it, you want to make it really clear what that email is for.. Maybe you're promoting a coupon for the plush doll or announcing a new feature or simply reminding them that the stock is running low.
[00:09:17] So if you're doing a sale, an example might be save 20% on McKenzie plush. So you're explaining what they're saving and what they're saving it on very clearly in the email. With inventor pitches you also might say something like, new feature plush concept for three-plus. That's an example of a headline that's really useful and explaining to the viewer what's actually inside that email. So in order for your email to actually be useful to your audience, you do have to know a little bit about them. So you do have to know that either they're looking for a feature plush or in the example of the save 20% on McKenzie, you have to know or have to have collected some data to know that that user was interested in the Mackenzie plush in the first place to make that email subject of valuable one at all. And if you do your homework, right, you're actually doing your reader a favor by including the most important valuable, useful information in that subject line right away.
[00:10:32] The next U, the third U we have to go over is unique. Now this is where really knowing your industry or really knowing your client can come into play. Really unique email subjects are the kind of email subjects that stick out like a sore thumb, but in a good way. A good tactic to fill that unique requirement is to try to use something that's called power words and power words are words that evoke a strong emotion in people. For example, words like surprising, or actually are unbeatable or happy or extraordinary. Power words like these, specifically positive power words are a great tactic for pitchy mills to a toy company executives or to sales emails to people looking to buy toy product. Because you have to imagine the mindset of the person receiving your emails. They want to feel joy. They want to feel happiness.
[00:11:37] I mean, imagine an executive working really hard all day at a job they love in an industry they love, but still stressed and working really hard. And then they get another ping to alert no other email and their initial reaction might be overwhelmed, but a positive power word like that, like unbeatable or extraordinary could catch their interest and bring up just enough positive emotion to help you get a click, So an example of this might be, you might have an email subject line, like a new invention, a surprising twist on outdoor games. But you can also fulfill that unique requirement in a different way. You could also fulfill that unique requirement by adding something into your email subject line. That completely goes against the standards of the industry or something that is just out of the norm for how people write headlines in your industry. So for example, if you have a digital toy, you could do a completely against the grain subject line that says something like more screen time can make your kids smarter.
[00:12:52] I mean, if that's true, if your product is maybe an educational product yeah. You can go for it and get that clickable headline that will make them want to read more. Unique headlines are jarring. Okay, next up our final U is ultra specific. I know it's not really a full U they talk about that in the book, but it helps you remember it, having them all before U's. The requirement for ultra specific is to get very specific to, and about your customer. So you can meet this criteria by adding a person's name to the email subject. But if you don't have that identifiable consumer data, then you've got to add something that you specifically know that the general person you're sending this email to once.
[00:13:43] Now when you're using the person's name one tip, do not overuse it. You know, not every email can go out with a person's name in it because the more you use it, the less effective it will be. But you can expect that if you put a person's name and it's spelled correctly in the email headline, that you'll get about a 10% lift in your email, open rates just by having that first name in the subject line. And as I said before, the second way to get a very ultra-specific email title is to really try to pull the value of what's in the email and explain it in three words at most in the title.
[00:14:28] So those were the four U's from the art of click by Fisher Glen. Now the four U's urgent, useful, unique, and ultra specific you'll learn in that book. He has a slight lead different description for each, but I've given you kind of my interpretation, applying it through email. But that book is fantastic there is a link in the show notes. So head over to thetoycoach.com/97 to grab the link in the show notes, you can grab this book. It's really a fantastic read. You'll learn about the four U's and so much more.
[00:15:08] Before we move on, I do want to give a few bonus tips that I've picked up along the way about using special characters in your email subjects. Now emojis have become increasingly popular in email headlines, and they are good. But don't overuse them. And keep in mind if someone's phone or browser isn't updated with the latest softwares like yours is they may receive your emoji as just a plain box. So an emoji cannot stand in the place of a good headline. You still always need a good headline to be safe.
[00:15:50] But what also works great with email subject lines, other than emojis are actually square brackets. Don't know why, but they have a higher open rate. So if you're sending a customer email to try to send them a 20% off gift card. You might want to try typing in open square bracket 20% off close square bracket and finish the rest of your headline from there. There's something about that bracket I don't know if it's that it makes the email feel sorted or just feel focused, maybe less overwhelming, but there's something about specifically that helps lift the email open rate.
[00:16:33] And finally, let's dive in to a few of my highest converting email headlines. But before we dive into this headlines, there is something you should already be wondering my friend, and you should be wondering what I consider high converting. For anyone that doesn't know, converting really just means you put something in front of someone, you send someone an email in this case and they take an action that you are hoping they will take. So that action could just be opening the email. And in this case, we are going to be talking about it as if that action is just opening the email.
[00:17:11] So you should be wondering what I think high converting is, but you should also be wondering what the industry norms are, what the industry standards are for email open rates. Okay. So let's go through some of those examples and then I'll tell you what I consider high converting. Now, according to knowledgebased.constantcontact.com, there was a study that's been updated at the time of this recording very recently. And the study states that the overall email open rate all industries averages 17.57%. Now I know that's not a ton but that it is what it is now.
[00:17:54] Let's dive a little deeper and look industry-specific. There are a bunch of industries listed on this site. So I'm going to share the average email, open rates for retail and online stores that are DTC or direct to consumer because that's the most important for the entrepreneurs out there. And then I'm also going to share the email open rate standards for consulting services, because after looking through. All of the options. I've really feel like this is going to be the closest category. That's similar to the type of outreach you might do as an inventor, offering your product for a license at a toy company.
[00:18:37] Okay, so for retail, and that's brick and mortar and online wholesale and direct selling stores. The average open rate is 11.63. I want to put some numbers to that, just so that you can get a little bit of perspective. 11.6, 3% open rate means that if your email list is a thousand people, you can expect 120 of those to open the emails that you send them. for consulting services, management, marketing, and advertising. I know it's not really a perfect match for toy inventors. But that open rate is 12.4. What I consider high converting is 30% or more. So the emails I'm going to share with you today have no less than a 30% open rates. Some have quite a bit more, and we're going to, I'm going to share these emails and then we're going to break down the four U's and try to pull out the words that apply to each of those U's and see if it makes sense, right. Okay. So just as a quick reminder, from the art of click before U's, we want to pay attention to our urgent, useful, unique and ultra specific. You can grab that link again in the show notes thetoycoach.com/97. I pulled out three of my highest converting email headlines. The first one is, did you grab your free pass to the festival of licensing? And it is every, I mean, this is a small detail that maybe you wouldn't think it's that important, but every word is capitalized except for the to and the of. The next item that is a high converting email is, your next toy opportunity is just a Tik Tok away. I remember writing that one and I remember thinking, oh, this is so good. So I'm glad to see that it made the list. And the third and final email with a high conversion rate that I'm going to share is how diverse is your toy company? For questions to inspire a more diverse life. Love it. Okay. So let's break those three down so we know what urgent, useful unique and ultra-specific are.
[00:20:58] So starting with, did you grab your free pass to the festival of licensing? Now, when I looked over this headline, the word grab stood out to me as the urgent term. Because grab insinuates, you're doing something very quickly. And it also insinuates that you're trying to get it from someone else. Like perhaps there are other people interested and then let's move on to useful with the word useful, I see free pass. Because If somebody is maybe just out of school, they would see a free pass as a fantastic opportunity. And then we have to go on to the unique, what is the unique part of this email headline?
[00:21:44] So initially I'm thinking the real question format because so many email correspondence at this time, we're going out to promote the festival of licensing. And I do remember there, you know, it was just a lot of headlines. You know, call to actions, but there was no content that was designed like a question. And so I think that the question format itself for the entire email subject line is the unique thing. And last but not least we have ultra specific. Now the ultra specific part of this headline in my mind is the you, did you, that's the moment where we're really pulling in the viewer and saying you. Hey you right there, all we need is like an emoji pointing at them if we could do that. But Hey, you, you over there, so I would say the you is the specific.
[00:22:37] Okay, let's move on to the next one. The next subject line is your next toy opportunity is just a Tik Tok away. So when we break this one up, let's start looking for that urgent word. And I believe that urgent word is just. That urgent word is almost kind of a teaser of like, it's only this much, you know, why can't you do it kind of an attitude is what this headline gives off, like your next opportunity is just around the corner, you know, like, all you have to do is go around the corner.
[00:23:11] Now, after we look at urgent, we need to look at useful. So the useful piece of this headline is your next opportunity because that explains exactly what it is and why it's so valuable. Because this headline is telling you that this podcasts or this product, whatever it is, is valuable because you are going to learn more about this topic inside of it. Now let's move on to unique. And when I looked at this headline, I was looking for words that seem unique. And I think the most unique thing from this headline at the time was Tik TOK. People were talking about it, but it wasn't as big of a conversation within our toy industry so I do believe Tik TOK was that unique piece that helped to stand out.
[00:24:05] And finally ultra specific. So with ultra specific, it was a little bit harder with this one. You might say your next toy opportunity would be the specific areas. Okay. Let's dive into the final subject topic. And that final topic is how diverse is your toy company? Four questions to inspire a more diverse life. Now I do have to say something I found in research while preparing for this episode was why the human mind tends to like odd numbers in list items, list blog posts and list like this over even numbers. I don't know how true this is, but apparently when you have even numbers, people feel as though you made an attempt to have the list have an even number. When it has odd numbers, it feels more genuine like the top five or the top three, it feels a more real apparently.
[00:25:06] Okay. So back to this email subject line, how diverse is your toy company? Four questions to inspire a more diverse life. So, first I'm looking for the urgent. What's the urgent here? Why does this headline work? And I do believe that urgency actually comes from kind of a power word more and life. Those words together do you kind of create some urgency, especially as you're an older person. And then when we get into useful, we have to find out why this product is useful. That's when I look at questions to inspire a more diverse, because this is making it clear that this is just not about identifying what's wrong with your company, but this is about giving you questions to inspire a more diverse life or community.
[00:25:57] Next up in the for U's we have unique. And the way that this headline is unique is again the format, because it has a question and then an answer. So it's actually the entire style of how this headline is written that gives it the unique quality. Finally we move on to the ultra specific title and that is really the first half of the headline. The half that says, how diverse is your toy company? It's very specific is asking you about your toy company. Specific question, how diverse is it.
[00:26:34] Now I want to say you can definitely utilize the lessons from these subject headlines for your toy or your product pitch. You want to try to use you in order to be more ultra specific or names if you have them in your email client somehow. And then you do want to use that urgency if you have a sale, people need to know about it and they need to know when it's over. So you want to make sure your email subject lines are really hyper-focused on letting people know what you have going on and that there is a time on it. Even if you share an email update about your doll, that doesn't have a specific sale attached to it. And it's really just about the doll itself, make sure that you're making it useful. What are they learning about the doll? Hyper-focus on that.
[00:27:29] Okay. Before I give my summary of today's episode, I'd like to take a short break and give a shout out to Pearly Tasker. Pearly is an incredible student of toy creator's academy, and she is gearing up to pitch at women empowerment day. Pearly, I wish you all the luck in the world. Who ever has an opportunity to sit down with you is going to be blown away. I absolutely love the product that you're creating. It's so well-executed and so innovative. Congratulations Pearly. Now, if you also want to find out how you could be a student of toy creators academy, just head over to toycreatorsacademy.com to learn more.
[00:28:11] Okay. Let's dive into the conclusion of what we learned today. To start we learned that there are over 128 business emails sent and received by business professionals every single day. And we know now that that is 16 emails per hour. So if we want to stand out, we've really got to pay attention to these Four U's the structure of a headline. You are going to go pick up the book, the art of click and learn all about it because the four U's are going to tell readers exactly what they get by reading the content. It's going to promise to be useful and give them some sort of value that they can apply to their business immediately. It's going to have a sense of urgency. There will be a sense that they should do this now rather than later. And that does not mean you should keep following up. Just let your initial email do that talking for you.
[00:29:08] Now, if you are in my podcast insiders club, I just want to let you know that I'm going to be giving you guys a swipe file of my 10 highest converting email subject headlines, so that you can adapt them into your product lines. The podcast insiders club is only available to alumni of toy creators academy, but if you are an alumni and you want to join and you can't please reach out to me. As always thank you so much for being here today. I know your time is valuable and that there are a ton of podcasts out there so it means the world to me that you tune into this one. Until next week. I'll see you later toy people.
-
🎓Learn more about how you can develop and pitch your toy idea with Toy Creators Academy® by clicking here to visit toycreatorsacademy.com and join the waitlist.