Preview text is your frenemy!

Vincent Chi’s Hot Source episode taught us about the importance of capitalizing on the first 34 characters of a message.

By the time you’ve said, “Hi {{name}}, I hope you’re well. My name is” you’ve already used up your preview text… and your message will go unread!

If you’re struggling to get out of the mindset, we’ve got some extra inspiration for you.

Vincent brought along this example to the episode:

Subject: Love the blog you wrote!
Message: What a great blog you wrote about your project at [company], it was a really interesting read. I wanted to connect because…

An oldie, but a goodie. Look at their recommendations.

Subject: {{full_name}} is a big fan of yours!
Message: Reading {{first_name}}’s recommendation gave me an inferioty complex 🥵

Sometimes your project is interesting enough to grab the candidate’s attention.

Subject: Have you explored partical swarm optimisation?

Message: We’re about to kick off an R&D project looking into PSO, have you been down that rabbit hole before?

Or maybe something a little left of field… They just posted about finishing the New York marathon?

Subject: My shin splints don’t want me to run a marathon…

Message: Congratulations on finishing the New Yolk marathon! Shin splints are my big blocker…

We hope this helps get the creative juices flowing!

Remember, the objective of the first message isn’t the make a hire. It’s to get a reply!

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