Bad News for “Bad News” Subject Lines
I recently watched a video by Frank Kern that shows how a subject line that says "bad news…" got a whopping 39% open rate. And that triggered a flood of emails from copycat marketers. Can you guess the subject lines of these emails?
You guessed it right! All of these emails had the subject "Bad news". Come off it friends. You missed the whole point. What Frank has done is used the "negative news is read more often than the positive news" psychological trigger to boost his open rate. We were all worried that something bad happened to Frank or his business.
But this has to be used in moderation. You cannot keep sending the ‘bad news’ every time and still enjoy the same open rate. People will get pissed off when they will realise that they are being taken for a ride and you will lose their confidence – bad thing to do for a long term perspective.
What do you say? Please share your most responsive subject lines with other fellow readers. Did you get similar response rates the next time you used this type of line?