The other day I did a quick survey of my overflowing email inbox to see how many subject lines really made me want to open the message. The results were about 30 percent. That means seven out of 10 senders, such as newsletters, seminars, and brands fall short in enticing me to read their correspondence. This low number tells me there’s lots of room for improving subject lines, as these are the vital words that determine if electronic communication gets digested.

With nearly 90 percent* of adults on the Internet using email, sending electronic messages is one of the easiest ways to reach out to potential customers. To do so effectively, however, you must grab their attention immediately with a strong, active subject line. Otherwise, all of that great information within the body of the email will be wasted. In short, email subject lines must stop readers in their tracks.

Here are a few tips we use at CMD to create attention-getting subject lines:

• Read news headlines and popular Twitter users for inspiration: Ever notice how headline news writers and great tweets have the uncanny ability to grab your attention effortlessly in just a few words and characters? That’s what you should strive for.
• Avoid SPAM language: Terms like “win” “save” and “hi” may send your message straight to the junk folder. For example, instead of saying “Enter to Win a Vacation,” say “CMD Wants to Send You to Hawaii.” For your reference, here’s a list of over 200 SPAM words and phrases to avoid.
• Use power words: Whether it’s a call to action or a report of action, the lively tone of the subject line will move readers to open your email. For example, instead of writing “Google, Facebook Don’t See Eye-to-Eye,” write “Google Fights Back against Facebook.”
• Think numerically: Using numbers, like “Six Tips for Becoming a Better Communicator,” will let potential readers know what to expect from your email. Plus, having a set number implies a set length, which is inviting—especially in the age of information overload.
• Make words count: Odds are if your subject line rambles on, your readers will trail off. No matter the length of your subject line, make each word pull its weight. Remember, if you succeed in convincing the reader to open your message, you have the entire body of the email to fill with details.

What exactly does an effective subject line look like? Here are some examples that grabbed my attention:
• Appealing to curiosity, from the Smart Brief on Social Media: “Dispelling the No. 1 social-media myth”
• Listing the most provocative headlines of the day’s news, from AdAge Global: “U.K. election ad airbrushed; Pepsi is now Pesi in Spanish; 8 Things Foreigners Get Wrong About China”
• Posing an interesting question, from Real Simple: “What Would You Give Up for a Free Hour?”

With these basic tips, you can put together compelling subject lines that get results. Remember, your target audience will never get to the juicy content you’ve created if the subject line doesn’t pique their curiosity. Nor will they see the email if the terms in the subject line send the letter straight to the junk folder.

*From the Pew Internet & American Life Project http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Trend-Data/Online-Activites-Total.aspx

After the release of Microsoft’s latest search engine investment, Bing http://www.bing.com, there was an onslaught of credible and non-credible reviews of everything from its underlying technology to the choice of its name. The most ironic comments were from many a Scotsman; the word “bing” in Scotland can also refer to a wastepile.

In Google’s Technology Overview http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html, the perfect search engine is defined by co-founder Larry Page as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” Anyone who’s recently committed a search query to the annals of Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages) does realize this is more of a quest than current reality.

I’m not here to pore over discovery into the poor makings of a search engine, nor wax poetic on the glorious wonders of search visualization, however, part of what I get paid to do and definitely what drives me as a digital strategist is to understand current technology trends and to glance into the future to identify what brands should be paying attention to.

The reality is that semantic and visual search options are here. And, if you’re a big brand relying on the 90% (and growing) market share that Google and its partners in SERPs Yahoo and Bing hold, you’re playing the right odds. But, for every monolithic corporation there are a handful of visionaries and technologists that are willing to take a risk at making something better and more powerful for the user.

That said, there’s a movement around the creation of common information structures. The W3C has published guidelines at http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ on participating in the Semantic Web. It’s also worth looking at Common Tag http://commontag.org and others on the development of an open tagging format. On April 13, 2009, Arun Radhakrishnan wrote a post on Search Engine Journal regarding “9 Semantic Search Engines That Will Change the World of Search,” http://www.searchenginejournal.com/semantic-search-engines/9832/, and I believe he and others are definitely onto something. The crux of the situation is that users still want the fastest route from query to results; but the majority of those users doesn’t necessarily care or understand its relevance. So cycling aficionado that I am, I decided to dive into some searches.

In a quick comparison of Hakia (one of the aforementioned “9”) vs. champion Google for the term “Tour de France,” each yielded similar results. Even though Hakia was developed by looking closer at ontology and semantic rankings, it really doesn’t yet take advantage of many Web assets. And, it’s still text-based, so the results cannot be custom tailored visually.

When I started to play with the visual search engines, the real fun began for this cycling enthusiast (and admitted right-brainer). The power of the visual cloud, like seeing what you’re searching for in Searchme, was compelling.

And, Viewzi offered several different views into its results. The more visually delicious options are the Google Timeline and the Photo Tag Cloud (shown here).

Last on my Tour de Search is Spezify, a search tool utilizing relevant, free and open APIs to generate a more diverse set of results. Although more traditional SERPs have options to view blogs, microblogs, social resources, e-commerce, images, etc., it’s impressive to see the free associated relationships drawn up in a visual mind map based on keywords, tags, titles and content.

So, what’s the real takeaway for a brand navigating the Semantic Web and visual search aggregation?

The answer can be simple: The User Experience. It’s why we have strategists, information architects, user experience engineers, information and visual designers. It can also be complex, as the art of search engine optimization (SEO) is being redefined.

The aficionado of your brand may not use the path most traveled; from a desktop on the leading browser or from the leading search engine. What’s a critical failure? How about when a user, expecting to see visual results from your brand instead receives the “In order to view this page you need JavaScript, Flash Player, or Flash Player 8+” message?

For instance, many of the web assets from one of my favorite personal brands, Nike, are not accessible from my favorite device, the iPhone, using its native OS Safari browser. When I don’t have JavaScript or Flash Player installed on Firefox or Chrome or Internet Explorer, the same falls true. Until Windows Mobile 7, Google Android’s newest native browser, and future versions of the iPhone OS Safari browser are released, I still won’t be able to consume the visual layer or search in this new visual sense.

As to my original Tour de France reference, right now it’s less about seeing who takes the yellow jersey (maillot jaune) awarded to the best overall rider and more about appreciating who wins the white jersey (maillot blanc) given to the best up-and-coming youngster.