CMU School of Drama


Thursday, October 24, 2013

5 Tips For Writing Productive Email Subject Lines

Asian Efficiency: One of the quick wins for everyone who wants to spend less time managing emails is by writing effective subject lines. When you and everyone else around you writes productive email subject lines, you all save time.

14 comments:

Olivia LoVerde said...

Personally, I have never given subject lines of e-mails that much thought, but now being in a college setting where one receives multiple emails a day I do. It always saves me time and makes my life easier when the subject lines are detailed. This way if it say something detailed I can easily see if the email applies to me or not. If the subject line is too broad I have to go through the email that turns out to be about chemical engineering and a waste of my time. I will keep these tips in mind when sending emails.

Nathan Bertone said...

I really liked reading this this article because email has become my primary mode of communication for the past few years. The subject line is the second most important thing to me when looking through my inbox. I first look at who the email is from, and then I look at what the subject line says. If the email is something like "Food" or "Look at this" I am less compelled to read it, but if the subject is something efficient and effective like the article states, it moves to the top of my priority list. This article definitely helped me look at the way I write emails and the subject lines that I include. After reading this article I looked through my inbox and found a total of three "Good" subject lines, and they were all from CMU mass emails.

beccathestoll said...

Huge thing. Emails must have clear enough subject lines that they auto-sort or auto-filter correctly. As I have moved up and begun to work on more than one show at a time here, it is super important for me to both know my audience, and know what context an email is being sent to me in. Having folders and rules to auto-sort on my emails has made this incredibly helpful, and for this to work it is crucial that the name of the show be in the subject, or whatever the other relevant sorting item is. It also applies when sending emails to professors for approval, since I know many of them have their emails auto-sort. "Rehearsal Report" is nowhere near as helpful as "CATS Rehearsal Report 1/5/1997".

Philip Rheinheimer said...

This is a really informative article. I usually put some thought into my email subjects but not as much as this article suggests. The parts about abbreviations and standardization were especially useful and interesting. I didn't know EOM was a thing and that would have been good to know in the past. I have never put the entire body in the subject line but I have received emails like that and was often confused when the body was empty. Including something as simple as EOM would have reduced the chance for confusion. I also though the concept of using standardization and filters to make sure certain types of emails always go to a specific folder was a really useful tip. Overall I felt like this article had a lot of really good and useful info in it that I think should be more widely known.

april said...

This seems entirely excessive to me. I get writing clear and concise emails and putting actual thought in to what you wright but putting that much thought and effort into the subject line is seriously overkill. First of all I don't see how that saves anytime, unless you are sending an email to someone who likes to hoard their emails and frequently goes back to check them. Also now that I am thinking about it, I am personally a fan of the one or two word subject line because that enables for easy searching when you type in the search box. If the subject was long and elaborate like they were suggesting I think it would actually take longer to find. I certainly think there are things we can do to save time and simplify our lives, but this is not one of them.

Jason Lewis said...

I never realized how important a subject line can be. I usually just assume that my simple standardized subject line I use with my name and a couple words about my email are enough. I loved how this article really clarified how to efficiently write subject lines. I feel this is a great way to just save time and continue one with productive work ethics. However, the abbreviations part is the only part of this that I feel can be a problem in most places just because of the fact that not every place has standardized emailing systems. I feel it can be useful, but you'd really have to make it a mission to have everyone on the same page.

AAKennar said...

I hate subject lines and I always struggle with what to put in that evil line on the email. So this email helped me out with some tips and hopefully I can actually incorporate the tips into my emails. A good subject line gets you to open the email and then that could be a great things for you!! So write some sweet subject lines and ROCK ON!!! I mean just do IT!!

Unknown said...

This is some of the best computing advice I have seen posted on this blog yet. On the same note as the digital resume article from last week, the industry today relies on mobile devices more and more often as the sole means of accessing email. When I receive an email on my phone, I typically assess its importance based on the subject line.

The only thing I would add for the entertainment industry is that managers should ensure that they include information in the subject line to facilitate automatic filtering in the inbox. Personally, I like to automatically filter each different type of report from each show I’m working on. Having the appropriate words in the subject line makes this process much easier.

Unknown said...

While this article was extremely useful for those who don't have a good understanding of the purpose of an email subject line, the point about putting the one line body of an email in the subject line really annoyed me. I know people who do this, and it continually annoys me. I would much rather have a one word subject then a one line body than no body at all. The worst is when people start a thought in the subject, then finish it in the body. This is confusing and unprofessional. Other than that this article was spot on.

Thomas Ford said...

Whenever I have to write emails I'm always unsure about what the subject line should be. I don't like receiving emails without a subject, and I can definitely recognize when an email that I receive has a bad subject line, but I still don't know what to write. This article was helpful in letting me know what not to do and that I should try to be more specific, but at the same time I'm not sure how relevant this is to me because I'm not sending out workplace type emails. For me an email could just be submitting a paper via email, so in that case all I write in the subject is my name and what the paper is. That doesn't have a verb, but I'm not sure what I could use as a subject line for a situation like this that has a verb. I'm really not sending out emails about meetings with people or that tell them to do revisions. I did like the article, but I'm not sure of it's use to me, at least at this point in time.

E Young Choi said...

This article brings out very interesting, yet important, point for me because whenever I write an email to professors or teachers, I struggle with what the subject should be. After reading this article, I think this article gives me very in-dept information of right directions. I figured out that subject is just as important as the body because I, too, sometimes read the subject only and decide whether I will read the email or not. I agree how the subject should be specific as possible, yet still short if possible. Also, before reading this article, I had no idea what NRN means. Since I know this now, I should keep in mind these five points when writing emails, so that the receivers can find it easy and productive.

Unknown said...

I've always found it difficult to find an appropriate subject for emails. While this article offers some very valuable tips, I find a few of the points counter productive. I find it sometimes quite annoying how an email subject will contain all of the information due to mobile applications. Sometimes my phone will cut off lengthy titles of a subject and I'm left with only being able to read the body and if someone leaves the information that was in the subject out of the body then I'm left clueless. While I guess it's okay to include all of the information in the subject, I strongly feel as though the information should still be found in the main body.

Unknown said...

Literally subject lines are what make or break an email I feel. Especially here at the school of drama where our email volume is substantially high, someone needs to be able to at a quicks glance know immediately what the email about is without having to open it. Brevity and clarity are always key in my opinion.

Unknown said...

I definitely agree that there is a huge difference between a good title line and a bad one. A good header can cause a quick and fast reply, while a bad subject line will force an email to the bottom of the to do list. That being said, I had never heard of the two tips to have actionable subject lines. The prefix system sounds good as well. I'll definitely make sure to keep all 5 tips in mind when I write future emails!