The Subject Line that Opened a Thousand Emails

Let’s face it –love it or hate it, email marketing is still quite effective and has an amazing ROI (approximately $43 for every dollar spent – not too shabby).

The Story: While working on the 2012 Arizona Centennial Conference one of my tasks was to send out weekly e-blasts.  With a program consisting mostly of presentations on historic preservation, water rights and other topics I knew next to nada about, coming up with subject lines other than “Register Now” was rather daunting.

Then I discovered a portion of the program that was rather juicy: The Mock Trial of Winnie Ruth Judd!

Judd was a medical secretary from Phoenix found guilty of murdering her friends Agnes Anne LeRoi and Hedvig Samuelson over the alleged affections of Jack Halloran in 1931. Apparently Winnie and her buddies had a thing for good old Jack that resulted in dismembered bodies stuffed in trunks on the Golden State Passenger Line headed to LA (and we thought crime was bad today).

The notorious crime was the subject of the book “The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd” by Jana Bommersbach and inspired the reenactment of her controversial trial at the 2012 conference.

Now, for the subject line that got one of my best open rates ever – can you guess?

Trunk Murderess to be at Conference.

Sometimes you just have to think outside the trunk (sorry, couldn’t resist that).