“FED UP TRYING TO WRITE YOUR OWN AUT”

Is the above your subject line? If it is, you planned it very poorly.

The complete subject line was:

“Fed up trying to write your own autoresponder messages?”

But few will ever know it. Keep reading to find out why.

I am a member of several Safe Lists…. so I get TONS of mail. I really enjoy looking through the advertisements but I find it aggravating that few seldom ever tell in the subject line what the message is about.

At the same time, as an advertiser in such lists, I pay close attention to the subject lines to see what really stands out. Due to the sheer volume of mail subscribers to such lists receive, a subject line has to be both noticeable and tell the subscriber why the message is worth reading. In any case, your posting to such lists are likely to be passed over, but much more so if you do not have a subject line that meets these criteria.

The problem with developing a great subject line is further compounded due to the logical limit of characters you can use in the subject line. Most E-mail programs will allow 60 or more characters to be placed in the subject line. (A character being any letter, number, or space.) But, how many actually show up to the subscriber when the subscriber is scanning the titles?

I use Pegasus Mail as my primary e-mail software, and I also have AOL. When I list my mail on AOL it is obvious that 60 or more characters can be viewed in the subject line. On Pegasus Mail, only 32 characters can be viewed in the mail list. Of course, you can see more characters on the subject line when you actually open the mail, but at that point your subject line has already done its job. Thus, unless I find a commonly used mail reader that shows less than 32 characters on the subject line when listing mail, I consider 32 characters as the logical limit.

I feel it is important to format your subject line so it is noticeable and your most powerful message appears in your first 32 characters. This is not to say that you can not use longer subject lines. Rather, your most powerful message needs to appear in the first 32 characters, and the remainder of the subject line be dedicated to your lesser message.

How to accomplish this is a subjective question. The key is to tailor your subject lines to the list you are posting it in. If the majority of the subject lines in your list use special characters, to be noticed, you should refrain from using them. If few use special characters, you should use them. If the majority use all caps, you should not. If the majority uses initial caps, all caps should be effective.

After looking at the message that the above subject line was part of, maybe the sender should have said instead:

>WINNING AUTORESPONDER MESSAGES