Posted on Wed, May 05, 2010
By Melissa
It happens often in the PR world. You write an e-mail pitch, you send it off and you sit there hoping you’re going to get a response back. Then, five times out of ten, you’re still waiting after three days, wondering why you did not get a response. You start evaluating your pitch and whether it really relates to the contact you e-mailed as much as you thought it did. But what if it isn’t the content in your actual pitch? What if the problem is as simple as your subject line?
In my last post, “What is the Real Value of Public Relations?,” I spoke about an experience I had working at a former agency that demanded business press for no reason. It was during this exact experience that I learned how a subject line could actually affect if or when someone would respond. We experimented daily with subject lines to get responses. We tried catchy, off-the-wall subjects to get feedback from our contacts. Some laughed or didn’t react, but, overall, we got a response. It was embarrassing, yet gratifying at the same time. Hey, you’ll do anything to help your client understand why their top contact won’t speak with them, right?
So, as I evolved in this PR profession, I’ve helped my teams realize that it’s more about getting to know your contact then thinking of a catchy, off-the-wall subject. From my experience and discussions with contacts, the crazy subject lines didn’t prove to be as worthwhile as they seemed at the time. I generally ask colleagues: Do your contacts respond to “Re:” or “Fwd:” or just your client’s name? Maybe. Do they respond when you paste in the title of a release or the trend subject about which you think they are writing? Probably not. The point is: You need to experiment - Find a pattern in your outreach, get to know your contacts, research them before you speak with them, provoke their interest through your subject line and get noticed.
Here are some additional tips from an online service called Mail Chimp, “Best Practices in Writing Email Subject Lines.” My favorites are:
- Avoid the words free, help, percent off and reminder
- Keep your subject line to 50 characters or fewer
- Keep the message straightforward and avoid using splashy promotional phrases, CAPS, or exclamation marks in your subject lines. Subject lines framed as questions can often perform better.
- Put yourself in your recipients' shoes. Don't sell what's inside. Tell what's inside.
So, instead of telling your manager that you can’t get an answer, think about what you can do to get that answer next time. It will help you and your contacts understand what you are pitching, and help you get the answer you’re seeking.
Posted on Wed, Mar 03, 2010
By Cathy
If you have spent longer than one or two years living in New England, you learn how to live and work through the long, cold winters. You make extra time to get up, warm up the car, wear layers, etc., but even the most winter-tested individual is challenged when Mother Nature takes an unexpected turn and the phrases“ disaster area” and “National State of Emergency” start popping up hourly in your vernacular.
While Metis is based in the South End of Boston, I live and commute into the city from Southern New Hampshire. One of my favorite blogs, Workshifting, pretty much sums up how I operate on a daily basis. Last Thursday I experienced one hell of a windstorm, along with the rest of Northern Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Southern Maine. As of today, we still don’t have power. Not only did we lose power at the house, the entire town and all the surrounding towns for 150 miles lost power. In total, more than 250,000 people were sitting in the dark. Imagine that many people without gas, credit cards, heat, hot water or cell phones, and you can expect that the phrase “all hell broke loose” comes next.
This was a powerful weather event that stopped life as we know it for several days and left people scrambling for alternate ways of doing the things we take for granted each day. It was a forceful storm -- not one that moved the earth, tore down cities or left thousands homeless, but a near-hurricane that significantly shook up the way you view the reliability of the tools you rely on to keep your business moving.
Losing complete connectivity last week taught me some valuable lessons in how to really work SHIFT.
Here are five lessons I relearned during the 2010 New Hampshire Windstorm:
1. You are only as strong as the network that supports you – my team jumped in and helped out with everything I was working on and helped me shift assignments to ensure that our clients wouldn’t be affected by my absence. Life and work definitely goes on without you, so set yourself up to be as replaceable as possible.
2. Plan for the worst and expect the best – Create a contingency plan. If you don’t have a team, then work with partners that can easily help you if needed. I learned some valuable lessons about being better prepared for the future, and am implementing them now to ensure that when the next natural disaster comes my way, I am even more prepared.
3. Be upfront about your personal needs – I was in a complete state of shock. We had trees down everywhere and neighbors in need. I had to be honest with myself and my team to help them understand exactly what I was facing. Not having power at the house is a total nuisance. The entire town(s) or an entire region not having power is truly a different matter.
4. Create a true workshifting environment – being able to work anywhere at anytime is really lip service unless you act on it. I learned that I was not as prepared for workshifting as I had thought, so I am setting myself up with the right technologies – extra batteries, new generator, satellite phone, etc. – along with the other applications I use (Box.net, Carbonite, Google Wave and more) and processes (updated phone lists, calendar updates, etc.).
5. You can always disconnect, even when you feel you “can’t” – Receiving such a forced disconnect was shocking to my system, but taught me a valuable lesson that it’s good for me to get “off the grid” more often. Being available 24x7 or on-demand for my team, clients and partners takes its toll. You always promise yourself that you’ll take a break but it’s easier said than done. The realization that taking off for five days is not the end of the world, especially during a natural disaster.