In our experience working with pet stores, email marketing is a highly underutilized marketing strategy, which is so confusing for us! As far as ROI goes, email’s track record and success are not debatable.

For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $42 (Source: DMA).

Looking to get more return on investment for your pet store email marketing? Take advantage of the Pet Store Email Marketing Hub for more information and more resources from our Blog area. Keep reading to learn from our experience working with pet stores and getting high open rates on email marketing campaigns. You can contact us to schedule a free consultation and marketing audit as well! We provide numerous ways for pet store owners to improve on their pet store marketing strategy, or specifically their pet store email marketing, at no cost.

Contact

Successful Subject Lines for Pet Store Email Marketing

Here are some of our best tips for pet store email marketing - we’ve sent millions of emails and launched hundreds of campaigns. They haven’t all been great, some have been outright poor performers, but we make sure that we learn from both our wins and our losses. You should too! Failure is a starting point, not a stopping point.

1. Use Social Proof

We just mentioned social proof the other day in our pet store SEO and pet store website article on 5 Tips for Pet Store Website Pages to Convert, and the same principle apples for pet store email marketing.

In the same sense that customers want reassurance before buying into a product or service, your email subject line can provide that comfort in an inbox. Here are a couple of examples for pet store email marketing subject lines that use social proof:

Why 2,632 of our customers recommend Fromm foods
How Natural Balance satisfies pets and their parents

2. Announcements

One of the primary reasons that pet store email marketing can be so effective is that pet parents willingly opt in to it. They sign up for it, and they want to hear from you!

When you’ve got announcements, store updates, or news, you should put that out into a short email blast and expound upon it in the body of the email.

Remember to segment your audience appropriately, so that your audience can decide if they want to sign up for your pet store’s announcements, sales emails, events, or some combination or all of those.

If you need assistance segmenting your pet store email marketing audience, check out this resource: Email Segmentation, What It Is and Why You Need To Do It.

3. Get Personal

The more personal, intentional, and precise your email marketing is, the higher your chances will be of opening and converting on that campaign! We recommend a few strategies to increase your personalization on pet store email marketing:

Start collecting relevant data! “But Jet, how do I know what data is relevant? How do I collect that?” Check out our resource on Email Isn’t Dead for more information, but here’s enough to get you started:
- Customer name, email, phone (the essentials)
- Customer type (dog/cat/bird/farm)
- Pet name
- Pet birthday
If you can integrate your sales data with your customer data, you can send an email to all customers that purchase cat products, or all customers that purchase Blue Buffalo dog food, or pet parents that haven’t purchased a toy for their dog in 6 months.

When you have data like THAT, it gets easy to personalize a subject line. Here’s the formula:

BENEFIT + YOU/YOUR + WHEN

It really is that simple. To find the benefit, ask “what’s in it for them?’" Utilize “you” or “your,” and/or a pet name when appropriate, to ensure that this offer is just for them. And lastly, tell them why they need to take action right now! Here are a few examples for you to work with:

10% off toys for Fido (it’s been a while hasn’t it?)
Do you want Finns and Feathers Pet Store to grow next month?

4. Scarcity tactics can work

It might seem old-school or salesy, but scarcity marketing works. It’s a powerful driver of human emotion. “There’s only one left, we have to get it!”

People often want things that are rare, or difficult to find. Low supply and high demand increases the perceived value of products, and you can and should use this in your pet store email marketing. Make sure that you’re segmenting appropriately - cat ladies don’t want emails on dwindling dog toys!

You've got ONE DAY to get this
Hurry! Only 3 of these left in store!
Last chance for our 30% off sale

5. Using data and numbers

Numbered lists are common in pet store SEO post titles, and they can be successful in pet store email marketing campaigns as well. Using data or numbers builds authority, credibility, and curiosity in the content of the email.

If your pet store SEO content is based on relevant content for your audience, using an email subject line to push people to it (make sure that landing page has a call to action!) can be an effective funnel to gain new business.

The key to success with this formula? Pay close attention to the number you use, ensure that your content is neither boring nor overwhelming, and be specific with your data. Here are a few examples to show you what we mean:

10 ways to keep your dog safe during July 4th
How Pet Engine Marketing grows pet stores by 25% YOY
5 key pet store marketing strategies

Successful Subject Lines for Pet Store Email Marketing
Conclusion

Having successful subject lines for your pet store email marketing campaigns is as important (yes, equally!) as your email marketing content. Regardless of how great your content is, your email campaigns are useless if they don’t engage people within their inbox and get opened.

Spending 45 minutes building an email, with 5 minutes thinking of a subject line, is completely putting the cart before the horse! Take advantage of our experience sending pet store email marketing campaigns to craft successful subject lines with our proven formulas and get your subscribers to open your emails.

For additional help, join THE Facebook Group for Marketing Help for Pet Businesses and join our growing community of pet business owners seeking assistance with their pet business marketing strategies.

Join Community