The Importance of Having a Good Subject Line in Your Email

"Don't Miss This!"

"Your $12 into $4000 in 7 Days Online!"

Don't they look familiar? Like me, you probably receive countless spam emails in your Inbox on a daily basis. Yet, we can learn from these spammers in crafting our emails. Without fail, most of the spam that I receive has arresting subject lines like those above. Yet, I have received emails from friends and non-spammers that either don't have a subject line or a subject line that doesn't spell out the purpose of their  intended message.

Let's say you are writing an email to a client to correct an error in the invoice sent out by your company and you have this as your subject line: "Invoice". This subject line does not give an indication of the purpose in sending out your email. The subject line could be rephrased thus: "Error in Invoice No. 45601". This would tell the reader what the email is really about.

A good subject line will also get the reader's attention. Quite often I have deleted emails that don't have a clear or arresting subject line. You may write a good email message, but there's still the danger of your email being deleted without the recipient having read your message if you have a lame or an ineffective subject line.

Business Proposal Writing: What We can Learn from Roshan Thiran, CEO of Leaderonomics

I'm a firm believer of learning from the world around us. So, after reading Roshan Thiran's Don't Kill Your Talent in his column Talking HR in StarBiz (Thursday 27 March 2012), I asked myself: How can I use his ideas in business proposal writing? I won't delve into the details of the whole article, but I'll just focus on one quality that caught my attention that made me want to read it till the end.

How can a headline like "Don't Kill Your Talent" ever escape one's attention? Roshan is advocating that business leaders should also source their talents from within the organization. He opines that business organizations are unwittingly killing their own talents by not allowing their own people "to fulfil their potential". He suggests giving their "inexperienced" people a chance to realize their potential. His battle cry: Keep pushing your people outside their comfort zone. They need experiences".

OK, I digress. What has the headline got to do with your business proposal writing? It shows me how important it is to have a title that catches the attention of your readers. You may not write a stare-in-your-face title the way Roshan wrote his, but the same principle applies: you need a good title that tells your reader what you are proposing in your proposal. Just imagine Kentucky Fried Chicken with a bland or cliched tagline like The best chicken in town instead of the memorable It's finger lick'n good. Now, you're not going to write a proposal title like a tagline, which would be frivolous. But that's the point: get your readers' attention with an appropriate title so they will just nod their heads and say, "Hey, that's what I want".

Roshan Thiran is the CEO of Leaderonomics who describes  Leaderonomics as "a social enterprise focused on inspiring people to leadership greatness."

Writing Business Proposals : How Do You Make Your Ideas Stand Out Like a Rockstar?

 Graphic Courtesy of One Academy Undergraduate 2012

If your job requires you to write business proposals to solicit for business or funds, your job depends on your ability to write your proposals well.

Someone says that "Every communication that leaves the office is a sales letter" and that includes  business proposals. Putting in the facts and figures require much background research and thinking, but how do you package and present those facts and figures in a way that is convincing or persuasive?

The presentation of your business proposal is more than just the neat layout and attractive binding- those things do give a good first impression, but they are superficial. Your readers may be the CEOs, directors, managers, accountants, or technical staff. They are busy people who will most likely have other business proposals to read. Just imagine, your proposal is but one of several that they have to read. Put yourself in their shoes. What are they looking for? What will make them want to read your business proposal out of the several that are on their table?

Chances are, the busy CEO or director may not even have the time to read your 50 page business proposal. If s/he likes what you have written in your introduction, s/he might think there's merit in your proposal and ask others in the company to look into it more thoroughly. However, s/he may decide not to read beyond the first paragraph of the beginning of your report. Worse, if they reject it outright after reading just the introduction.

How do you write in a way that will give your readers the A-ha effect? What will make your readers want to go beyond the Executive Summary? How can you use language and style to make your ideas stand out? Your proposal is one out of 10 proposals on your reader's desk. How do you make your ideas stand out like a rockstar?

You may have an excellent product or service, but if your reader is not convinced, your product or service will not stand a chance for consideration. And a lot depends on the language and style that you use in order to convince or persuade your reader.


This PSMB Write Winning Business Proposals Training Program focuses on the effective use of language to sell your ideas to your prospective clients.

This training program is HRDF claimable.