If Amazon shoppers are anything like me, they spend about half a second looking at the subject line of an unread email before deciding to open it or trash it. That leaves you with very little time to make enough of an impression on them to get you to the next step: leaving a review on their purchase. But with help from RepricerExpress, we’ll get you writing engaging email subject lines that will make even the toughest nut crack.
1. Add Some Personalisation in the Subject Line
One of the most powerful ways you can write an email subject line is to add the recipient’s name, name of the product, or purchase order number in there. Why? Because it immediately grabs their attention by telling them the email has something important they need to read, and not just something spammy that can be swiped into the trash can.
I buy on Amazon regularly, which means I sometimes get notification emails from them. If I only see “Amazon” in the subject line, I’m probably going to delete it because it’ll likely be long and wordy and not super important to me. But if I see “Amazon” plus my name or the name of a product I recently purchased, I’m definitely going to open it to make sure everything’s okay.
2. Be Succinct and to the Point
MailChimp conducted a study on the best practices for email subject lines and one of their strongest findings was keeping it short and on-topic. This is especially true for mobile users, as they deal with limited real estate on their devices.
However, while brevity works better than long clickbaity titles, you still need to be descriptive. Recipients need to immediately know what the email is about to be motivated to read it, so writing a summary like “Your order is on its way” goes a long way.
Lastly, this tip works best when the email being sent has to do with an already-established connection, like a recent purchase or customer question.
3. Go With Just One Word
For a really dramatic twist from the usual, try using just one word in the email subject line. This can be a powerful strategy for a couple of reasons:
- Recipients, particularly those checking email on mobile devices, have very little space in which to display email snippets. One word stands out from the clutter.
- It’s so starkly different from what everyone else is doing that it’s bound to cause a double-take.
The single word you choose should be something that inspires a visceral reaction. Verbs work really well here (e.g. “panic”, “stop”, “go”, “ending”), but nouns can also work quite well, too (e.g. “listen”, “danger”, etc.).
Related: How to Improve Your Amazon Email Subject Lines
4. Be a Little Punny
A little humour can go a long way, particularly when it comes to distinguishing yourself from the dozens of other emails the user receives each day. You’ve got a maximum of a couple of seconds to get the reader to stop and pay attention before making the decision to open the email, so make that short time count.
Let’s say you sell camping accessories. An example of a great email subject line you could use is “Abra-cord-abra!” (plus a few words customised to the nature of the email). It’s cheesy and it’s funny, and it gets the reader to pause for a second to digest the joke and wonder what else they’ll find when they open the email.
5. Use Sentence Case or All Lowercase
Stop reading for a second and do a little experiment. Check your email right now and see how many subject lines have title casing (the first letter of each word is capitalised). Probably most of them, right? And the ones that have either sentence casing (only the first word and proper nouns) or all lowercasing are more casual emails sent from family and friends.
If you want to subtly establish a sense of familiarity, do away with title casing. Depending on what you’re selling, all lowercase can be a great way to convey a sense of casualness, while sentence casing avoids the formality of business emails.
6. Write Listicle Titles
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, but writing a subject line that reads “13 blah blah blah” is a surefire way to grab a person’s attention. That’s because it sums up the contents for the reader before they even look at the material, giving them an idea of how much detail is waiting inside.
If I’m googling how to create an HTML table, I’m almost always going to go with something that enumerates what I’m going to learn instead of an article that vaguely mentions teaching me what I’m looking to learn. Plus, the listicle title tells me I’ll have several options at my fingertips, as opposed to the other title in which I may only learn one thing.
Pro tip: odd numbers work better than even ones.
7. Create a Sense of FOMO
People hate feeling like they’re about to miss out on something cool, and stoking that fear with FOMO can really help your email open rates. I subscribe to an outdoor lifestyle/gear store’s emailing list, and I fully admit I’m a sucker for emails that tell me a huge sale is about to end. Most of the time I don’t buy anything, but I always open the email just in case there’s an awesome deal I can grab.
Final Thoughts
You might have the best-written email and the most amazing product offers, but if the recipient doesn’t open it, you may as well be talking to a brick wall. And when you’re paying for email services, you want to make sure as many of them are opened as possible. Once you’ve hurdled that obstacle, entice buyers into the next sale with an aggressively-priced product with help from RepricerExpress. But hurry, you only have 15 days to use it for free when you sign up now!
