Subject lines: Amazon’s lessons on discounts and frontloading

Last month I ran three posts on what 187 emails from Amazon can teach us about subject line length, branding and personalization.

In a feedback poll, 84% of you asked for one more on the topic, so here it is…

Use of discounts and prices

As a retailer, Amazon inevitably uses email to offer discounts on individual products or product groups. These discounts vary from 10% to 90%.

Since the pulling power of a discount increases with the size, bigger discounts get more frequent use in their subject lines:

But what about those few times when a 10% discount features in the subject line?

Isn’t 10% too weak for the modern bargain-filled inbox, especially when your other emails are touting 40%, 50%, 70% discounts?

This again illustrates the idea that a subject line is the sum of its parts and context dependent.

The less targeted the email, the more Amazon has to compensate with a bigger discount to encourage attention. So you’ll find the big discounts featured in subject lines with broader product group promotions:

…and the smaller discounts where a targeted recommendation (based on past purchases) means the discount doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting. It’s icing on the cake:

Heavy discounts on a highly targeted email presumably make little sense for Amazon. If you’re recommending a very targeted up- or cross-sell, people will likely buy anyway or only need a small discount to be persuaded. Larger discounts carry a big revenue penalty and the additional lift in response doesn’t compensate.

Where targeting is weaker, however, Amazon uses the bigger discount to provoke interest and encourage people to explore the individual offers or product categories featured in the email’s body.

Since we’re often told that subject lines need to be specific and reflect the email’s content, does putting actual offer prices in the subject line make sense?

Amazon doesn’t seem to think so. Only a handful of those 180+ subject lines feature actual prices. This likely reflects the idea that the subject line is not driving action directly, but starts a sequence of events that will eventually lead to that action.

In other words, the subject line should not get the recipient to decide immediately whether or not to click, buy or make some other desired response.

Instead, it should persuade them to investigate further so you can exploit the richer environment of the email body and landing page to get the desired response.

[Another issue is the role that currency symbols and prices in subject lines might play in content filters.]

If you accept this approach as valid (some retailers do feature prices in subject lines more often), there are still two exceptions used by Amazon.

The first is to use price as an indicator of attractive prices in general for a particular product group. As Amazon does here:

The second is where the actual price really is a deal closer.

Frontloading

We’ve covered some of the main “hotwords” that Amazon uses to grab attention: brand, personalization, discount etc. But what do they put first?

The further back a word appears in the subject line, the less likely it is to get read. If for no other reason, then because email clients and webmail interfaces limit the number of subject line characters on display.

So marketers tend to put their “hotwords” as near the front as they can. Here are the first and second most popular subject line beginnings at the three different Amazons I looked at:

Amazon.com
1. Brand name, e.g. “Amazon.com: Bestsellers in Biographies and…”
2. Discount, e.g. “Save 32% at Amazon.com on…”

Amazon.co.uk
1. Discount, e.g. “Huge savings on…”, “Up to 70% off…”, “Save 26% on…”
2. Brand name, e.g. “Amazon.co.uk: Find great offers”

[Incidentally, since the analysis was done, I'm getting more emails from Amazon.co.uk that lead with my name: "Mark Brownlow: Save up to 70% on..."]

Amazon.de
1. “Jetzt neu: …” (translation: New release or New in stock)
2. Various…

While some differences likely stem from my different purchase patterns at each Amazon, it’s a reminder that different audiences have different hotspots.

Perhaps the Amazon.com brand has a particularly powerful pull in the USA, UK shoppers are after bargains and Germans like to have the newest thing?

The point is simply that there is no universal “winning” subject line approach. The words you use should adapt to different audiences. Just as you might write different ad or landing page copy depending on who you’re targeting.

When experts talk of email segmentation they usually refer to sending different content/offers to different groups of subscribers. But you might apply the concept equally to the presentation of that content or offer.

So the same offer or content goes out to the list, but different segments get different subject lines. You might lead with the discount for the “bargain hunter” segment, the newness for the “want to be first” segment or your brand for those who see you as their trusted adviser.

OK that brings to an end my interpretation of what the marketing brains at Amazon are trying to do with their subject lines…do you agree? Why do you think they do what they do?

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, subject lines

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