Reportlet: Retail Email Subject Line Study

Kevin Hillstrom, the president of MineThatData, wrote an interesting post back in February about how promotional retailers’ subject lines were. He used subject lines from my daily Subjectivity Scanners to make the determination, but the Scanner doesn’t include all subject lines so I decided to replicate his research with a bit more rigor. I examined nearly 2,000 subject lines from 94 major online retailers over a 3-month period and looked for promotional language, as well as how often they promoted free shipping offers and created urgency in their subject lines. The resulting 10-page reportlet includes rankings of the 94 retailers in the study according to the promotionality of their subject lines, their use of “hybrid” subject lines (ones with both promotional and non-promotional elements), their use of “free shipping” in their subject lines, and how often they create urgency.

Visit the Whitepaper Room to download “Retail Email Subject Line Study,” which is free for EEC members and available for a nominal charge to non-members. Not a member? Learn more about becoming a member of the Email Experience Council.

Other subject line research from the Email Experience Council:
Reportlet: Branded Subject Lines Underused by Retailers (March 2007)
Reportlet: Using Subscribers’ Names in Subject Lines (November 2006)
Read posts on RetailEmail.Blogspot about subject lines, including the 2006 Subject Line Hall of Fame