I was having this exact problem last month…

Upon looking at the open rates of my emails I was noticing an increased downward spiral of user open rates on my email list. It made me start asking myself why are people not opening my emails?

Was it because I spent most of my educational period in highschool English class in the detention room for skipping class? Yes I admit, I was the rebel teenager in highschool, go figure 😉

Was it my friendly and warm Canadian writing style pushing people away EH?

OR was it that I simply just wrote crappy headlines?

Personally, after some testing, I think it was the last one.

I just didn’t know how to write good headlines that intrigued my readers enough to open my email and read on further. Headlines that gave them the DESIRE to open up and read on…

So over the past few months I started running a few tests on some headlines in my emails testing different headlines with the same email body. I did this with 3 different products I wanted to sell online through my list. I highly recommend you do the same testing with your list.

Case Study Example: I wanted to let my list know of a webinar a friend of mine was hosting about WordPress so I wrote the same email body for all emails the same except I changed the headline to give it some testing research. These were the headlines:

1. Learn How WordPress Can Help Your Business Succeed
2. Enter Contest to WIN Website Design Mojo Program!
3. WordPress Sucks! I’m Done With It!
4. How to Get Your Website Online Quickly and Easily

Guess which one converted best and had the most open rate?

While #2 had a good open rate (probably because it had the words “Enter Contest to WIN” in it), #3 headline was opened 11X more than it. WOW! What an amazing open rate! The other two headlines had my same poor declining open rate.

I did similar tests over a couple of months with 2 other products and the results were the same each time.

My testing research results proving to me that crappy headlines will cost me dearly.

If my emails don’t get opened and read I’ll never make any commission sales on the products I am promoting.

Saying that, being able to write attention attracting headlines that create a desire for the user to open it and read on can be easily learned as I found out. You don’t have to be a professional copywriter either to engage with your audience through your email list. Remember me above spending most of the time in the detention room rather than in English class? I honestly think it was the teacher who just didn’t like me as it couldn’t have been my teenage rebellious attitude at the time 😉

Point being, you can write attractive headlines by just being you (with a little play in words and the use of AIDA marketing)…

According to Wikipedia: AIDA is an acronym used in marketing and advertising that describes a common list of events that may occur when a consumer engages with an advertisement.

A – attention (awareness): attract the attention of the customer.
I – interest of the customer.
D – desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.
A – action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.

Writing good headlines and sales copy is all about creating attention, interest, desire and action and doesn’t revolve around you almost failing English in Grade 9 😉

If you are finding that your emails aren’t getting opened I really recommend checking out like I did: Commission Machine

You can look at it by clicking here

(Time Sensitive: Price is going up on this product in 6 hours last time I checked so hurry over to get it at the cheaper price like I did).

Writing good headlines is just a fraction of what you will learn from this course to start making sales with your email list. For example, it even teaches you how to make money selling products even if you don’t have a list yet by using Facebook. And everybody nowadays has a Facebook account so no more excuses not to make money online.

I’d love to hear your ideas on writing headlines and what tactics you use so please share in my comments below.

To Your Virtual $uccess,