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The most popular subject lines from the top 1,000 online shops

Clear “winners” are subject lines with an exclamation mark (exclamations and prompts!) and about the topic of “saving” (terms: discount, promotion, offer, discount, off, bargain, save, deal,%). Both are used in more than a third of all online shop emails sent — either they work really well or marketers suffer from a lack of creativity. We cannot answer which of this is true: Our analysis shows the most popular word fields and their use over time — but does not say whether they are particularly successful. Other word fields, listed here in the graphic, follow only at a large distance.

The length of the subject lines is independent of the terms used. There are relatively clear Best Practices, which marketers are apparently following: Most subject lines of promotional emails we have received are 31 to 40 characters long. Ultrashort subjects of up to ten characters are almost never heard, whereas long-copy subject lines suspected of Twitter do.

The year clock never stands still: subject lines over time

We also looked at whether there were any noticeable trends over the course of the year. The answer is clear: Yes! For example, you can see that significantly more calls and requests are sent out in November than usual — which could be related to the Christmas shopping season.

In addition to the “!” Will the “?” gladly used, but do you prefer to ask questions in summer (already packed your suitcase? Forgot sunscreen?) , while announcing at Christmas (!) will.

The topic of “saving” shows the same peak in November, only much more clearly. In direct comparison to the requests, you can see that online shops communicate less (on) urgency at the beginning of the year. From March, the subject lines will be more provocative and from May there will be more frequent appeals to avarice — until the summer summit in July.

Before Christmas and in April, email marketers become curators: they invite your prospects to discover new things, share recommendations and present selected products.

Searching for and finding new things is apparently good at the turn of the year, certainly not in November.

“Profits” and “surprises”, on the other hand, seem to be clear Christmas and Advent (calendar) topics.

And unsurprisingly: Christmas is clearly the time for gifts and gift-giving — the peaks for Valentine's Day, Easter and Mother's Day are not as high as we would have expected.

It is nice to see the summer and winter sales, which have long since ceased to exist — in any case, they seem to continue to exist on the Internet.

The topic of “trend” is ahead of sales — it's easy to see how the new catalogues, collections, must-haves and trends are first announced in March and September and then the dusty stock items are offered on sale a little later (see above). It is also noticeable that trends are not the topic at Christmas.

On the other hand, exclusive, limited and exquisite offers are often presented in November. There is also a peak of exclusivity in July — it's over in August.

The situation is similar with “time pressure” subjects — actually subject line perennial favorites, but which are also increasingly used in autumn and early summer.

Finally, the best, latest, greatest — the superlatives. Overall, a very popular word field! Megacrass and super fat are the clusters in November/December and June/July.

Methodology and population

A total of 72,000 emails received from the 1,000 largest B2C online shops in Germany from the 1,000 largest B2C online shops in Germany, determined by EHI Retail Institute “E-Commerce Market Germany 2022", sorted by e-commerce sales in fiscal year 2021, were evaluated.