Read anything about email marketing today in forums and you will probably come across loads of people that believe that marketing products through any of the forms of email marketing has lost all effectiveness.

Whether you publish a newsletter or ezine, use email or ad blasters or publish your emails to safe lists the statistics are not too encouraging. Less than two percent of many emails are ever even opened. This is not true for everybody though...

There are some very successful business people out there marketing products and services and even mlm programs using email marketing methods almost exclusively. Obviously these emails are getting opened!

So what is the difference?

How do they do what so many cannot?

The answer must be centered on the emails subject line or headline. The truth is that if your email is getting deleted without even being opened, the subject line just is not doing its job.

What is the job of the subject line? The only purpose it could possibly serve is to motivate someone to open and read the email message. If the email does not get opened then there was simply not enough interest generated to motivate someone to open the message. This is the "sale" of the headline.

A highly effective subject line will jump out at your reader and tell them not just something about the topic of your email, but also that they will be missing out on something if they fail to read it immediately! Whether you are talking about information, income or even some sort of secret, they should feel like they can not possibly get it if they do not read this email right now.

It almost goes without saying that this kind of subject line needs to stand out from all of the others in the recipients inbox, so using someone elses prewritten headline that hundreds or thousands of others could be using is obviously not a good idea. Originality is key in this respect!

You can easily prove this to yourself. Think back to any recent major product launch. After the first barrage, did you open any of the duplicate emails you got in your own inbox? Of course not! Why would you? But I bet that you opened some others about that launch that somehow motivated you with this very method. You thought you would be missing out if you did not open that email.

Approach the product or service you are promoting from a different perspective than you see others doing. This is easier than it sounds if you do your homework. Find something about the offer that solves a problem that you have faced, and exploit that. Let the subject line you write tell them this could be their last opportunity to solve this problem ever.

Another great tactic is to either tune into a controversy surrounding the topic, or to create one. Use statements like: "The Founder's Have Signed Affidavits Stating This Software Is 100% Legal!" This has been used before to great effect. Use your imagination and you will find dozens of possibilities. Anything that portrays the topic as cutting edge, radically different or borderline "Black Hat" is highly effective and motivating.

If you succeed in getting across that your prospect will miss out on vital information by failing to read your message, your subject line will succeed and your email will get opened...