Honey Roasted Please.
In PR we put a lot of effort into crafting the perfect, most intriguing, all inclusive…yet brief… email subject lines.
We used to be clever, “Soak up the fun with SpongeBob Squarepants at Del Mar 7-23.” That’s ineffective. Then we became concise: “Tiffany & Co. in studio for holidays.” This is working. But how boring is that!?
There is one subject line in my inbox that gets me chuckling every month. It’s the Southwest Airlines Click n’ Save Email Updates. Some are clever, some are just so un-corporate that they make me smile, as if it’s some kid at a laptop who decides on it, doesn’t run it by anyone, then just clicks “send” to however many thousands that receive it. No biggie. It’s a simple matter, but something a subject line-whiz can appreciate.
A sampling:
Fly Away With These Special Deals!
Low Fares Get You Basking in the Sun!
Lucky You! Fares Priced From Just….
A little google search behind Southwest’s marketing takes me to a site I had forgotten about when it first launched with quite a bit of buzz that followed: Nuts About Southwest. I like how casual it is. I like whoever the kid is behind Southwest’s email subject lines, I like that that Southwest tells jokes over the microphone before takeoff and I like that I was just able to vote for the honey roasted peanuts on their blog.
Please. Vote for the honey roasted peanuts.
I absolutely agree, Lizzie. I always enjoyed perfecting the technique of eye-catching writing because that was the only way to get an editor’s attention. The crazier the headline, the more attention it got. Not the case any longer as those catchy phrases that slide of your tongue don’t get eaten by Google. Now I am re-perfecting my writing technique to include straight forward, key word optimizing phrases that SEO loves but my Feature Writing Teacher in college would hate.
Straightforward is the way to go, people. On another note, I tried voted for HR peanuts, and the poll appears to be over.