To help you elevate your email marketing game, we asked founders, CEOs, and marketing professionals to share their most effective tactics. From using charm and humor to boost click-through rates to enhancing engagement with customized content, here are the top twelve tactics these experts swear by. Here are 12 most effective email marketing tactics.
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- Use Charm and Humor
- Conduct Phased Email Campaigns
- Focus on Personalization
- Prioritize Audience Segmentation
- Track Success with A/B Testing
- Automate Your Email Series
- Keep Consistent
- Provide Interactive Content
- Write “Legit-Bait” Subject Lines
- Add Value in Email Copy
- Optimize for Mobile
- Customize Your Content
Use Charm and Humor
We crafted emails with more charm than a puppy parade and sprinkled irresistible CTAs like confetti. The data speaks louder than a rooster at dawn—a mind-blowing 40% spike in click-through rates!
One time, we sent an email with a cheeky subject line, “Crazy Cat Person Starter Pack.” It had our audience giggling as they opened the email to find a purrfect offer on cat-themed goodies. The result? The highest sales were meow-nificent!
So, with the right mix of wit and strategy, email marketing can be like a never-ending fiesta. Keep spreading smiles and watch your inbox turn into a treasure trove of success!
Himanshu Sharma, CEO and Founder, Academy of Digital Marketing
Conduct Phased Email Campaigns
Email marketing isn’t all about sales. Conducting three-to-four-phase email campaigns, where only the final email is a sales email asking for some kind of financial transaction, has proven effective. The initial two-to-three phases are aimed at providing value to the audience. Since implementing this strategy, there’s been a large drop in the number of unsubscribes and an enormous increase in the open rate and engagement rate.
There’s an optimal balance between sending value-driven emails and sales-driven emails. Too many sales emails will put the audience off and will increase the number of unsubscribes and unopens. However, too few will cause a shock to the audience when a sales email is finally sent, making the point of the campaign misleading to the customers.
Two four-phase campaigns per month have been found to work best for most clients. Two emails per week is usually the sweet spot, but it takes a bit of trial and error before finding the right balance for the industry.
Robin Francis, Digital Marketing Executive, Growthlabs
Focus on Personalization
One thing I’ve seen over the years is that personalized, value-added messages work best for our email marketing campaigns. Emails written in a personal tone with a hyper-targeted approach towards solving a problem drive higher click-through rates and help scale faster.
Another important aspect is list segmentation. It has helped us share more relevant messages with specific target audience groups. Over the years, list segmentation and list cleaning have significantly helped us in customer retention and also kept our sender reputation intact.
Vaibhav Namburi, Founder, Smartlead
Prioritize Audience Segmentation
One email-marketing tactic that has consistently delivered positive results is segmentation. Having a segmented list allows you to target the right people with the right message at the right time. This increases engagement, conversion, and boosts overall campaign performance. A/B testing is also used to ensure emails are optimized for maximum impact. This combination of segmentation and testing is a powerful tool in email-marketing.
Constantly challenging oneself to come up with creative ways to engage subscribers, whether it’s through personalization, storytelling, or using visuals to help capture their attention, is beneficial. Creating an emotional connection with readers is key when trying to build relationships. Plus, it makes the process much more enjoyable!
Tristan Harris, Demand Generation Senior Marketing Manager, Thrive Digital Marketing Agency
Track Success with A/B Testing
A skilled marketer tests everything, including email marketing, regularly. This is how you figure out which campaigns (and methods within campaigns) produce the best outcomes.
You can, for example, test identical email copy with alternative subject lines or similar subject lines with varied content. This is known as A/B testing. Email marketing strategies are affordable. They will become even more cost-effective when they are optimized.
Jeff Romero, Founder, Octiv Digital
Automate Your Email Series
From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that automated email series—like welcome messages, cart abandonment alerts, and post-purchase follow-ups—are effective at generating new business and strengthening existing client bonds.
Setting up timely, trigger-based emails allows you to send important communications to customers at pivotal moments in their journey. Make sure your automated emails are engaging and productive by providing useful information in a compact style.
Rameez Usmani, Digital PR and Chief Marketing Officer, Solar Panel Installation
Keep Consistent
Email lists need to be kept warm, and for that to happen, you need to constantly be in front of your audience. One tactic that always brings positive results is consistency when sending newsletters.
Sometimes, you don’t have much to say, and this is why it’s important to batch content ahead of time so you’re not scrambling to type things to send to your subscribers. Once your list is “warm,” meaning you frequently send out content, and you have an engaged audience, it becomes easier to make sales.
In summary, you’re doing nothing less than building rapport with your subscribers. They signed up to receive content from you for a reason, so not sending them what they want can cost you in the long run.
Robert Burns, Marketing Director, Oxygen Plus
Provide Interactive Content
Using interactive content is one strategy that yields positive results for us in email marketing. Instead of static emails, elements like quizzes, surveys, and polls are incorporated, which engage recipients and encourage active participation.
A unique and effective tip discovered is adding gamification elements to the interactive content. By offering rewards or creating a sense of progress, such as using progress bars, recipients are more likely to engage and respond. This gamified approach not only boosts engagement rates but also provides valuable insights into audience preferences for more targeted marketing efforts.
As a result, it strengthens customer relationships and increases conversion rates.
Casey Preston, CRO and Founder, Stratosphere
Write “Legit-Bait” Subject Lines
One email marketing tactic that has consistently delivered positive results is the use of “legit-bait” subject lines. These intriguing, yet authentic, subject lines spark curiosity and drive the recipient to open the email, without resorting to deceptive “clickbait.”
The key is to balance intrigue with honesty, ensuring the email content delivers on the promise made in the subject line. If you’re looking to boost your email open rates, consider honing your subject line crafting skills. In email marketing, your subject line is the gatekeeper of engagement.
Jaya Iyer, Marketing Assistant, Teranga Digital Marketing
Add Value in Email Copy
When writing an email copy, it’s essential to keep the customer’s needs and interests in mind. Adding value means providing useful and relevant information or offering something that can genuinely benefit the recipient. This could be helpful tips, personalized recommendations, exclusive offers, or any content that addresses their pain points or interests.
Aquibur Rahman, CEO, Mailmodo
Optimize for Mobile
The majority of people now use mobile devices to access emails, making it essential to ensure that emails are mobile-friendly. This can be achieved by optimizing email templates for mobile devices, using responsive designs, and keeping the content concise and scannable. Higher click-through rates have been experienced by optimizing email templates for mobile users.
Farhan Advani, Director Marketing, PhotoshopBuzz
Customize Your Content
One effective email-marketing technique involves customizing content based on individual recipient preferences.
By dynamically tailoring the content to match each recipient’s interests and needs, it significantly improves engagement and conversion rates. Utilizing recipient data, such as past interactions and behaviors, allows marketers to deliver content that precisely addresses the specific needs of each subscriber.
This personalized approach fosters a stronger connection with the audience, resulting in increased open rates, click-throughs, and conversion rates. Recipients are more likely to engage with content that aligns with their preferences, leading to enhanced brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Ultimately, this strategic approach strengthens the brand-customer relationship, driving long-term success and growth for the business. Using dynamic content, email marketing is a powerful tool for nurturing leads, increasing sales, and fostering customer loyalty.
Saneem Ahearn, VP of Marketing, Colorescience
