How to Craft Attention-Grabbing Email Subject Lines for Ecommerce

When it comes to crafting effective subject lines for email marketing, understanding your target audience is essential. By conducting audience research, you can gain insights into their pain points, goals, and interests, which can help you create subject lines that resonate with them.

The more that your subject line resonates with your audience, their problems, and the solutions your products provide, the better they will perform.

Here are some techniques to consider:

• Conduct surveys: Surveys are a great way to collect valuable feedback and insights from your audience. Ask questions about their interests, preferences, and pain points to gain a better understanding of what motivates them.
• Customer personas: Think of a customer persona as a fictional customer who perfectly matches with your brand and business. These are super useful, even beyond creating great subject lines. Check out our free guide and template on building ecommerce customer personas at this link.
• Analyze website analytics: Review your website analytics to gain insights into what pages and content are most popular with your audience. This can help you identify the topics and themes that are most likely to resonate with them.
• Monitor social media conversations: Social media is a great source of information about your audience. Monitor conversations related to your industry, brand, or products to identify the topics that are most relevant and interesting to your target audience.

Great subject lines (and most great writing online) is an exercise in empathy. The better you understand who you are writing for, the better your writing. Don’t neglect spending time thinking about your customer’s relationship to the email you are sending them. It might sound silly, but think of emails in your own inbox that feel like spam - avoid being that sender at all costs!

Crafting an email subject line that stands out from the countless others in your subscribers' inboxes can be a daunting task. But, with a bit of creativity and some tried-and-true best practices, you can turn your subject line from a snooze-fest to a showstopper.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when crafting your next email subject line:

• Keep it short and sweet: Your subject line should be concise and to the point. Avoid using long or convoluted phrases that may confuse or overwhelm your subscribers.
• Use personalization and segmentation: Personalization can make your subscribers feel valued and increase the chances of them opening your emails. Segmenting your email list and tailoring your subject lines accordingly can also improve open rates.
• Create a sense of urgency: Urgency can create a feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) and prompt subscribers to take action. Use words like "urgent" or "limited time" to create a sense of urgency.
• Ask a question or make a statement: Asking a question or making a statement can pique your subscribers' curiosity and entice them to open your email. Make sure the question or statement is relevant to your content.
• Use humour or intrigue: Humour or intrigue can make your subject line stand out and capture your subscribers' attention. Use puns, witty one-liners, or thought-provoking statements to make your subscribers curious about what's inside.
• Use trigger words early: A trigger word is something that causes a reader to feel the need to learn more. These are often related to an offer, a key feature, or some value exchange (think sale, limited, exclusive, etc). Don’t wait until the end of the subject line to use these. Most mobile devices show only 25-30 characters of a subject line in an email inbox!

By keeping these best practices in mind, you can craft effective email subject lines that grab your subscribers' attention and improve the success of your email marketing campaigns.

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method used by email marketers to optimize their email campaigns. By testing different elements of an email, such as the subject line, marketers can gain insights into what resonates with their audience and improve their email marketing efforts.

A/B testing your email subject lines can have a significant impact on the success of your email marketing campaigns. By testing different subject lines, you can identify which ones perform better and use that knowledge to improve future campaigns. A/B testing can also help you:

• Improve open rates: By identifying the subject lines that perform best, you can increase your email open rates and ultimately improve your click-through rates and conversions.
• Increase engagement: A/B testing can help you identify the types of subject lines that resonate best with your audience and lead to increased engagement with your emails.
• Understand your audience: A/B testing can provide insights into what your audience responds to, allowing you to tailor your email marketing efforts to their preferences. With better open rates and engagement, A/B testing can drive your segmentation efforts even further.

When conducting A/B tests for your email subject lines, there are several best practices to keep in mind:

1. Test one variable at a time: To accurately measure the impact of a subject line on your email campaign, it's essential to test only one variable at a time. For example, if you're testing subject line length, make sure all other elements of the email are the same.
2. Use a large enough sample size: To ensure that your results are statistically significant, you need to test your subject lines on a large enough sample size. A sample size of at least 1,000 subscribers is recommended.
3. Use a control group: When conducting A/B tests, it's essential to have a control group that receives the same email with the original subject line. This allows you to compare the performance of the new subject line to the original.

Perhaps the most important best practise with A/B testing is to track results! By analyzing the open rates and click-through rates of each variation, you can determine which subject line resonated better with your audience and adjust your future campaigns accordingly.

To track your results effectively, use an email marketing platform that provides detailed analytics on your campaigns. Most email marketing platforms offer built-in reporting features that allow you to track metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. We always recommend Klaviyo for ecommerce businesses, and their A/B test history tools are great for tracking results.

It's important to track your results over a significant sample size, preferably over several campaigns, to ensure that your findings are statistically significant. Additionally, consider segmenting your audience to get a more detailed picture of how different demographics respond to your subject lines.

Once you have identified which subject line performs better, use it as a benchmark for future campaigns and continue to refine your subject lines through ongoing A/B testing. By continually testing and optimizing your email subject lines, you can improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns and drive better results for your ecommerce business.

By following these best practices, you can conduct effective A/B tests for your email subject lines and optimize your email marketing campaigns for maximum impact.

As important as it is to know what works when it comes to crafting effective email subject lines, it's also important to know what to avoid. Here are some common mistakes to watch out for:

• Spammy words and phrases: Avoid using words and phrases that are commonly associated with spam, such as "free", "act now", or "limited time offer". While these may grab attention initially, they can cause your emails to be marked as spam and harm your sender reputation.
• Overpromising and underdelivering: Don't make promises in your subject lines that you can't deliver on. If you promise a big discount or exclusive offer, make sure that it is truly something special that will excite and engage your subscribers.
• Failing to deliver on the promise of the subject line: Make sure that the content of your email matches the promise of your subject line. If your subject line promises one thing but your email content delivers something else, your subscribers will quickly lose trust in your brand and be less likely to engage with future emails.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can ensure that your email subject lines are effective and engaging, and that your subscribers stay engaged with your email marketing campaigns.

When it comes to crafting effective email subject lines, sometimes the best way to learn is by example. Here are some real-world examples of attention-grabbing email subject lines from ecommerce businesses, along with an analysis of what makes them effective:

1. "Don't Miss Out: Your Exclusive Offer Inside!" - This subject line creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity, encouraging subscribers to open the email to take advantage of the offer.
2. "Your Favorites Are Back in Stock!" - This subject line targets subscribers who have previously shown interest in certain products and creates excitement around the availability of those products.
3. "Limited Time Offer: Save X% on Your Next Purchase!" - This subject line includes a clear call-to-action and creates urgency by highlighting the limited time frame for the discount.
4. "Get X% off Your First Order When You Sign Up!" - This subject line offers an enticing incentive for subscribers to sign up for the email list and become a customer.
5. "We Miss You! Come Back and Get X% off Your Next Purchase" - This subject line targets lapsed customers and creates a sense of personal connection and exclusivity by offering a discount.
6. "Introducing Our New [Product]: Be the First to Get It!" - This subject line creates excitement around a new product launch and encourages subscribers to be the first to purchase.
7. "Your [Product] is About to Expire - Renew Now and Save!" - This subject line targets customers with expiring subscriptions and creates a sense of urgency to renew before it's too late.
8. "Thank You for Your Purchase - Here's X% off Your Next One!" - This subject line thanks customers for their purchase and offers an incentive to come back and shop again.
9. "Your Cart is Waiting: X% off Your Purchase Today!" - This subject line creates urgency around an abandoned cart and offers a discount to incentivize the customer to complete the purchase.
10. "Last Chance: X% off Ends Tonight!" - This subject line creates a sense of urgency and encourages subscribers to act quickly before the discount expires.

In conclusion, crafting attention-grabbing email subject lines is crucial to the success of any email marketing campaign. By keeping subject lines short and sweet, using personalization and segmentation, creating a sense of urgency, asking questions or making statements, and using humor or intrigue, you can increase open rates and engagement with your emails.

It is also important to avoid common email subject line mistakes such as using spammy words and phrases, overpromising and underdelivering, and failing to deliver on the promise of the subject line.

Remember, ongoing testing and optimization is key to improving email campaign performance. By regularly A/B testing subject lines and tracking results, businesses can continue to refine their email marketing strategy and achieve even greater success.