NEED SUBJECT LINE

No, the title above is not a placeholder, and, no, I didn't publish this post before it's ready.

But "NEED SUBJECT LINE" was the heading for an email I received a half hour ago from a well known tech business publisher and event producer. Within the body was info on a virtual event they're hosting on social media. I'm guessing the email went out to tens of thousands of people. Perhaps you received it, too.

If you're pitching something via email that requires little personalizing other than the company and contact names  it's certainly a good idea to work from a template you've created. I do it; everyone does. We all have our stories of emails sent into cyberspace with an itchy trigger finger only to realize a split second later some unforgivable mistake. Of course we try to ensure such instances never occur, but we're human, and it happens.

So when it does be prepared. I try to personalize as much as I can but have some generic terms and phrases I use as placeholders. If I forget to modify them and I contact someone with the template it's not a big deal. Also, in some cases it's a good idea to leave blank areas in a template for updating, as they're easy to spot. Some email services will also alert you if you're about to send a message without a subject line, something the company sending today's mass email could have really used.

And, as luck would have it, and since I began writing this post, the publisher/producer sent another email with the correct heading, and no mention of their earlier mistake. Not that someone didn't notice.