Banana Republic: It pays to be a morning person (Standout Subject Line)
Sender: Banana Republic
Sent on: August 2, 2013
Subject Line: It pays to be a morning person.
Why it’s a standout subject line:
This newsletter was sent to promote a 3-day sale in which shoppers could benefit from 40% off already reduced items using a code provided in the email. The catch (and promotions are always more memorable with a gimmick, right?) was that the sale would only be on each day until 13:00. In other words, only those who got up early to get their butts into the store (or website) would benefit from the sale.
So while the subject line already makes you wonder why it pays to be a morning person before you open the email, it also ties in nicely with the premise of the promotion inside.
The folks at Banana Republic could have gone with a subject line along the lines on “3-Day Sale but only until 13:00”, but that spells it out too obviously, not to mention that practically every second retail email subject line has the word “Sale” in it, making subscribers subconsciously “blind” to the word due to its ridiculous overuse.
“It pays to be a morning person” is a lot more fun and mysterious, so readers almost can’t help but open the email to find out what it’s all about, but for added incentive, the subject line is also immediately followed with the preheader text “3 days only: 40% savings until 1 p.m.”, clarifying the premise of the promotion for subscribers with email clients that display preheader text in the Inbox (like Gmail for example).