Ryan Dohrn answers a question about prospecting email subject lines. His rule: keep them to about 3 words, max 3 sentences per email. Use question marks and personalized teasers like "Your thoughts on this?" or "Have you considered this?" Skip clever lines, the recipient's name, and product names.
Hey friends and fans, Ryan Dohrn here answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com and love these questions, so keep them coming. All right, question here. This question comes from Rod in Washington State. Hey Ryan, I like the podcast and the videos too. Thank you, Rod. Ryan, I'm curious about your top 3 or 4 subject lines that you use during the prospecting process to get some type of open and reply. Any help is appreciated. So, Rod, obviously email is a big part of the sales business. So there are 3 or 4 subject lines that I use on a regular basis. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't give you a little bit of training on that. And I'm a big fan of what I like to call Uncle Ryan's rule of 3 and 3. 3 words in the subject line, 3 sentences max in every email. Now, when I'm writing subject lines, it's the first thing I'm thinking of, not the last thing that I'm thinking of. So the first thing I'm thinking is, What would cause the person's brain that's receiving my email, what would cause that person's brain ethically to say to themselves, oh gosh, I need, what is this? I need to open this. What is this now? And the way I do that is by asking a question. So one of the things that's gotten me a lot of success over my sales career is using subject lines with a question mark. So for example, it could be your advice question mark. Your thoughts on this? Now granted, that's 4 words, but you get my point. A little advice. Your thoughts on this? Have you considered this? New idea for you? Or things like that. What I'm wanting is someone to see the subject line and I want their brain to say, what is that now? I need to open that. Now you want to be ethical. Like I received one the other day, a subject line was free lunch? I'm like, heck yeah. I opened it up and I was like, ah, gotcha. All right, I'm not talking about fooling people. I'm talking about using normal psychology that would get someone to go, hey, you know, what is, you know, what is that? Now, most of you know my main company is Brain Swell Media. And so I had a subject line that said Brain Swell Media's '23 marketing plan. And I'm like, what is that? And so I opened it up and it was actually, it was a sales solicitation of somebody that wanted to help me with my marketing plans, which it actually worked because I opened into the email. Now, maybe I should talk, Rod, about some things that I don't think work. Subject lines that are overly clever, subject lines that have my name in the subject line, because I, for the most part, only spammers put your name in the subject line. Subject lines that contain your company name or your product name, that does not get me excited. I want you to think about what is that, what you can, what can you put in the subject line that would make somebody's brain go, oh, okay, I need to open that to see more, to get more. It's sort of like a bit of a teaser. Now, the next thing, Rod, that you want to be thinking about is what value will the person receive— the person receiving that email— what value will they get if they reply back to you? So if you're sending something out that's generic or something that's just a blatant solicitation, there's, there's no value in it. So when I'm asking people to reach back out to me, it's because I've given them a reason to reach out. Something in that email is of value to them. The other thing to remember, Rod, and everybody else out there is, I mean, if this job was easy, everybody'd be doing it. It does require a little bit of thought. And if you listen to the podcast, watch the videos that we put on YouTube and things like that, you'll realize that everything I do is very, very relevant. So I like to talk about things I've seen about their business on LinkedIn, press releases, things I've seen about their company on Facebook, things I've seen on Instagram. things I've seen on LinkedIn, those— that type of thing. Because the more relevant you are, the more real that you are. The more relevant you are, the more your credibility as a salesperson goes up. So Rod in Washington, I hope that's helpful to you. Thank you for that question. I think it's a really good one. So get out there and try to grow your sales and make things happen. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. And they're not. They're not crazy. Rod, you're not crazy either. We're not crazy. It's a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Also, friends, I'm out on the road 14 days a month speaking at national sales meetings, coming on location to help you and your team. If I could be of help, reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com.
