Personalized Subject Line

Overview

This guide will help you understand:

• What is a personalized subject line.
• Why you should use a personalized subject line.
• How to create a personalized subject line in Bloomreach Engagement.

What is a personalized subject line

Bloomreach Engagement enables you to design personalized subject lines to increase customer engagement. Emails can be personalized using various customer or event attributes or price-related information.

To test the impact of subject line personalization, create a scenario with multiple subject line variants and test them against the control group.

Why you should use a personalized subject line

Information overload and generic emailing are causing a decline in email open rates. We are overloaded by an unprecedented number of marketing emails every day. As a result, your customers have negative connotations when seeing email subjects containing phrases like “sales”, “limited offer". Customers filter these phrases as they go through their email inboxes. This behavior impacts:

• Email open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rate
• Revenue per visitor

The subject line is the first bit of information customers see when scrolling through their inboxes. No matter how good the copy is, if the subject line does not catch the attention of prospective customers, the email will be deleted. To increase email engagement, businesses need to find new creative ways to approach customers in a personalized way that is free of overused marketing phrases and tricks.

How to create one in Bloomreach Engagement

Open the editor

Visual Editor: Click on the {} symbol located in the bottom part of the editor.

HTML Editor: Click on the + symbol located in the bottom part of the editor.

Generate Jinja code

Visual and HTML Editor: Use the drop-down menu to select the desired information, then copy and paste the generated Jinja code into the subject line.

Note: If a customer is missing the selected attribute, nothing will be returned. For example: Hello {{customer.first_name}}, how are you?. If the first_name attribute is not available for the recipient of the email campaign, the subject line will look like this: Hello  , how are you?

Use case examples

Use customer attributes (first_name or last_name)

• The easiest approach to personalization.
• Customers are used to this practice which may decrease the efficiency of this technique.

Jinja code

{{customer.first_name}}, these are the deals that might interest you.

Use trigger event attributes

Personalization is based on the triggering event.

Example

The customer purchased a new shirt. You would like to inform them about the shipment details via email. The triggering event in this case is purchase.

Jinja code

Your order {{event.purchase_id}} is on its way!

Any trigger event attribute can be accessed using this logic.

Use product information

This might be used to:

• Include product information in the subject line.
• Improve the performance of other campaigns (abandoned cart).

Example

The customer has left a product in their shopping cart. To improve the performance of the abandoned cart email, add the name of the product they left in their cart to the subject line.

Jinja code

Don't forget you still have {% set firstitem = event.items[0] %}{% item = catalogs.catalog_name_here.item_by_id('firstitem.item_id') %}{{item.item_name}} in your cart!

🚧

Using this Jinja code assumes triggering the scenario by a cart_update event, which has items tracked as specified in the abandoned cart email guide.

Use discount information

This allows you to include the exact amount of the discount in the subject line, which is more effective than using a percentage discount.

Example

Using the Jinja code, create a personalized subject line showing a 10% discount on the specific amount as an exact amount.

Jinja code

Do you want £{{ '%0.2f' | format(event.total_price  * 0.1) }} off your pending order?

There are many other ways of how you could personalize subject lines. You will easily achieve the desired personalization using the editor wizard and Jinja. You can check out our guide to Jinja.

Test and evaluate the subject line

Once the personalized subject line is ready, test it against the control group using the Bloomreach Engagement A/B test functionality in the scenario builder. This approach can help you determine the personalized subject line's impact.

The result of a successful email campaign with a personalized subject line should be an increase in the open rate and other associated metrics (RPV and click-through rate).

Report accuracy

If you see an uplift in other metrics while the open rate remains static, double-check the report's accuracy. An increase in other metrics should always accompany an uplift in the open rate.

Segmentation

When designing your segmentation, remember that the actual subject line is not tracked anywhere. That's why we recommend naming the complete email node (tracked in campaign.action_name) with the same text as in the subject line. This enables you to have a better overview of the results.

For example in the scenario in the Test and evaluate the subject line section, renamePurchase confirmation Subject 1 to Purchase confirmation "text of the subject line”.

Review the example evaluation.