You’re probably familiar with what I mean by “clickbait. I expect you’ve seen it before in headlines. Like…
“Woman gives birth to nine-headed fish!”
Then you click through. And turns out someone just painted a picture of it (eww!)
That’s clickbait.
It’s the stuff that gets you to click because it sounds so intriguing. And so amazing.
But it’s actually totally underwhelming. Or even an outright lie.
It’s a massive relationship killer because (once again) it’s breaking trust.
People are giving you their attention, a highly valuable commodity in our modern society.
If you’ve enticed someone to give their attention to you through a fantastic-sounding, curiosity-laden subject line that gets ’em to click through into your email to read…
Then you MUST pay that off.
As soon as possible. Ideally within the first few sentences or paragraphs.
When you do that… they can scratch the itch that started when they read the subject line.
Then it’s like, “Ahh, that’s how it works!”
Make them smile when they realize the connection.
But if you don’t pay it off it looks really bad.
So take care to read your emails and your subject lines, to make sure they pay off the curiosity factor.
It doesn’t mean you can’t use sensational sounding subject lines.
You can in fact put the craziest sounding subject lines in there!
People LOVE sensation and curiosity.
But you’ve got to pay it off.
There has to be a valid connection to something that’s real.
So they say, “Aah, I see what they’re talking about.” And they feel happy and satisfied.
It’s OK to introduce a “curiosity gap” in your subject line.
So people are left wondering, “What’s that about? I have to see this…”
But if that gap is left open, and never paid off, then people will get tired of your emails. VERY quickly.
They’re angry because you wasted their time and attention. So don’t expect them to stick around.