When I asked which of four topics you’d like me to tackle from Dan Pink’s new book “To Sell is Human,” the clear winner was “The 6 Successors to the Elevator Pitch.”
You all know how I feel about the Elevator Pitch. Dan describes the practice as “threadbare” for two reasons:
- We have more access to decision makers and transparency are the norm versus in the past.
- Information flow has never been higher.
Dan shares that “McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the typical American hears or reads more the one hundred thousand words every day.”
The upside it this: the means your message in front of your audience today are more accessible than ever.
Hence, the successor to the Elevator Pitch.
Dan outlines the six successors as the One-Word Pitch, the Question Pitch, the Rhyming Pitch, the Subject Line Pitch, the Twitter Pitch and the Pixar Pitch.
Let’s talk about the Subject Line Pitch
In a recent survey, upwards of 17% of subscribers to Career Attraction (that’s just shy of 8,000 people from more than 47,000 who subscribe here) said they’d like to know how to write emails that got better responses.
Email is one of our primary communication tools and a place where we spend an amazing amount of time daily. Yet, there isn’t as much consideration given to what we send (in particular, the subject line) as there should be.
In short, every email is a pitch.
As Dan points out, email has become more “habitat than application.” And, that is exactly why it’s so easy to lose sight of the fact that every email is “a plea for someone’s attention and an invitation to engage.”
The ability to do so begins with the Subject Line.
Failure to open = a failure to begin communicating.
So, how do you get your emails opened?
Dan cites a 2011 Carnegie Mellon study looking at why some subject lines were more effective than others.
The study determined that participants based their decisions to open, or not to open, on two factors: utility and curiosity.
Utility related to emails that impacted work. Makes sense.
Curiosity, on the other hand, kicked in when the participants were uncertain about the contents.
While the open rates were equal, the utility emails were opened for extrinsic reasons and the curiosity for intrinsic reasons.
But, when extrinsic and intrinsic motivators were combined, the emails often failed.
Dan gives these examples:
Utility (extrinsic): “Found the best & cheapest photocopier”
Curiosity (intrinsic): “A photocopy breakthrough!”
Both (fail): “The Canon IR2545 is a photocopy breakthrough”
He also notes that that given the volume of email that most of us content with, “usefulness will often trump intrigue.”
Then he adds a third leg to the stool: specificity.
If he were emailing your packed inbox pitching this content, he’d use “3 simple but proven ways to get your email read.”
If Dan knew you and thought your inbox was a little lighter, “some weird things I just learned about e-mail.” (look familiar? :-))
Curious to see how it works for you? Try by using one of the Dan’s suggested Subject Lines like I did and test it with people you know…and those you’d like to get to know better.
More insights, hacks and techniques on the way from “To Sell is Human.”
