7 Tools I Use To Make E-Commerce Emails Stand Out From the Other 99%
Creativity is contagious. Pass it on
Do you ever feel like opening your email inbox is like walking into a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street?
Everyone’s screaming, they’re all trying to get your money, and most of them seem like they’re on cocaine. If you’re in charge of email marketing, I’m sure you don’t want to be part of that crowd. You probably want to stand out. With a crowd like that though, you might ask: How do I stand out when everyone’s louder than me?
Be like the fishbowl guy. Yeah, the guy in the movie who stopped working for a few minutes to clean his fishbowl before Steve Madden walked in. That being said, I don’t mean stop your work and clean your fishbowl — I mean take a step back and clean up your act. Like the fishbowl guy, put on a bowtie, even when everyone else is wearing a necktie.
Easier said than done — that’s why I use these seven tools to simplify the process of standing out. Here’s a list of the ones that have helped me get emails in industries (like apparel, skincare, CPG, etc.) to stand out from the crowd, and grow email revenue for dozens of clients.
1. TestSubject by ZURB
When I write subject lines, I like to imagine the competition is so fierce that we’re in a match 25X the size of the original Hunger Games. You never know whether or not the people you’re emailing to are subscribed to 300+ newsletters just like yours.
How do I know which subject lines will make the cut and which ones won’t? You need to see them the way your subscribers see them.
Enter TestSubject.
Within seconds, I can easily see if the sender name, subject line, and preview text will look interesting enough to click on. As you type in your information, you’ll see how it looks on three different devices. It sure beats creating a preview email in Klaviyo every time, making me waste 5–10 minutes on every email.
Not only does this handy tool help you see what looks intriguing, but it also helps you see what gets cut off. Sure, it depends on every device, but I like to aim for short subject lines most of the time because I’ve noticed that the majority of e-commerce email subject lines are so long that they actually get cut off.
2. Unroll.me
Are you subscribed to hundreds of newsletters like I am? No? Get to it and then continue reading. If you have more emails appearing in your inbox than Amazon boxes on my front doorstep, you’ll love this tool.
Unroll.me shows you every newsletter you’re subscribed to, making it easy for you to figure out which companies you want to continue allowing into your inbox and which companies you’ll want to give the boot. I instead use it to search for email ideas, see what’s been done, and figure out how to make it better.
It’s a lot easier to do those things when you have a full list of companies right in front of you.
3. RhymeZone
I like to sprinkle rhymes into email flows, campaigns, headers, and subject lines every so often because if you can deliver an idea in the form of a rhyme, it’ll be a lot more memorable and convincing. One of the reasons rhymes work so well is because the easier it is for you to process an idea, the more likely you are to remember it. The easier it is to remember something, the more likely you’ll think favorably of it.
That’s why I often use RhymeZone. It doesn’t just provide you with rhymes but it also gives you synonyms, antonyms, lyrics, related words, and more.
Sometimes, there’s a need to throw in a lyric or two.
4. RelatedWords.org
A similar tool to RhymeZone, this website offers some more innovative ways to express words.
It’s really useful if you write for an outside-of-the-box type of brand. One of the brands I write for sells beard products… so you can imagine it gets difficult some days trying to come up with a fun, alternative word other than “Canadian face carpet”.
5. The Free Dictionary
This is my favorite tool when it comes to writing creative headlines. I mash an idiom with a pun and the results are delicious.
I discovered it right before I started writing a bunch of emails about face and skincare products, and my day got instantly better. I ended up writing so much that day that you could say I was… blue in the face.
6. Punpedia
Oh man, you’re so great at whipping up puns.
When I hear those words, the stars align and my hands get sweaty. For some reason, it’s such an accomplishment to whip up a pun that people love. But I have a secret: generating puns using the deep, dark corners of my brain became so tiresome that I began to search for an alternative… and an alternative is what I found.
7. Milled.com
This is the search engine for e-commerce emails. I’m pretty sure it was created so that you could find discount codes for any brand that has over 5,000 subscribers but I use it for subject line ideas, email body ideas, strategy planning, competitive analysis, and so much more.
I always love looking at what other e-commerce stores are doing, not just to get ideas but to make sure I’m not copying what others have done. I also like to make sure that the emails I write go into people’s inboxes from a different angle than everyone else’s.
For example, if several e-commerce stores are talking about “staying at home and celebrating love from a distance”, then I want to write at an angle about making sure the product I’m selling will help people strengthen love with people in their social bubble.
What are some tools that you use to write on a daily basis? What tools help you stand out? What habits and practices help you?
