Every day, almost 319.6 billion emails are sent.
By the end of 2025, this figure is predicted to rise to 376 billion daily emails.
Email marketing tactics have evolved over time.
What worked five years ago is no longer effective.
However, it remains an important component of any marketing strategy.
In reality, email marketing is the go-to marketing medium for the greatest internet marketers.
Why, you might ask?
Because it produces outcomes and provides the best marketing ROI:
That’s correct!
Email marketing surpasses all other kinds of internet marketing, including SEO, PPC, and content marketing!
An email marketing strategy is a critical component of any marketing strategy. Email is the most cost-effective way to market your products, engage with consumers, and achieve your business objectives.
And, on average, every dollar spent on email marketing yields a $42 return.
Isn’t that good?
In this section, we will discuss the greatest email marketing tactics for achieving amazing outcomes with email marketing.
5 email marketing campaign improvement methods
If you implement these email marketing methods, email will quickly become your most significant medium!
Let’s get this party started.
1. Make your messages unique.
When we say personalised email marketing, we don’t mean sending an individual email to each and every user. Personalization entails using client data to produce a customised message.
Amazon is an excellent example of a corporation that excels at personalisation.
Amazon’s emails are all personalised.
It’s “Dear Steven,” not “Dear valued customer.”
It’s not “You might like these… (randomly produced),” but “You might enjoy these… (based on my purchasing history).”
Email marketing is more than just another marketing channel for Amazon. It is critical to the whole customer experience.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is an email wizard. Jeff Bezos recognises the importance of emails and has been known to read customer complaints. It’s also why recommendations account for more than 35% of all product sales (both via email and on screen).
Personalization has yielded similar effects for companies other than Amazon.
Experian discovered that tailored emails result in 6x greater transaction rates!
Let’s break this down into numbers that everyone can understand:
According to a 2019 study, email marketing generates $0.08 in revenue each email.
That may not appear to be much…
However, if you send an email campaign to 500,000 subscribers, you can earn up to $40,000.
That’s a significant increase in revenue!
However, if you personalise your emails, you may anticipate a lot more!
According to fresh findings,
Personalization can generate a $20 return on investment for every $1 invested.
How’s that for a money stream?
The most exciting thing is this:
Personalization is not used in 70% of firms’ email marketing strategies.
This means that by personalising your emails, you will stand out from the crowd.
Addressing the reader by name is the most basic form of personalisation. Most email service providers (ESP) have this functionality, and this strategy alone will boost the performance of your campaign.
Personalizing email subject lines with a recipient’s first name, for example, can raise open rates by 16 percent.
Given that 47 percent of all emails are read just because of the subject line, this is a surefire technique to get more eyes on your email.
Aside from using the customer’s name, here are a few other pointers to get you started with personalization:
Ask for the right information right away: Great personalisation begins long before you click the’send’ button. Everything begins with your sign-up form. Without data such as name, company, and location, your personalised communication will be severely limited. Remember to only ask for the information you require, not the information you desire. GDPR has had an influence on marketing teams in this way.
Use a valid email address for reply: When you utilise [email protected], the message loses its legitimacy. You want your readers to become involved with and respond to your initiatives. Using a real reply address will increase credibility and make the message appear more personal.
Include a real email signature: Just like a legitimate reply-to email address, you want to use real contact information within the email, and the easiest method to do so is to put your contact information in the email signature. Allowing your readers to contact you or interact with you online is a terrific approach to be personable with them and establish a relationship with them.
2. Divide your subscribers into groups.
According to email marketers, segmentation is the second most important activity this year.
Do you understand why it is so high?
Because segmenting your database makes your email campaigns far more targeted to your audience.
Consider the following example:
You’re throwing a networking event for small company owners within a 20-mile radius of your location.
How can you expect your event to be well-attended?
The solution is segmentation.
The easiest strategy to persuade small company owners to attend your event is to build a segment of people who classify themselves as a small business owner and live within 20 miles of your event, and then send them an email invitation.
The segmentation process is straightforward and may be accomplished with CRM software.
Consider sending a single email to your whole database of subscribers dispersed across the country (or continent).
How inconvenient is it to receive an email inviting you to an event on the other side of the world?
It’s quite inconvenient!
Before you begin segmenting your database, consider how valuable it can be.
According to a recent study, segmenting your email list improves all email marketing KPIs.
Among the benefits of segmentation are improved performance in:
Segmenting your lists results in higher open rates, revenue, leads, transactions, and more customers.
Another advantage is that segmentation is compatible with GDPR and email marketing.
Is it, however, effective?
Yes!
Here’s an example from one of our own email campaigns:
We just finished two email marketing initiatives. The subject line and content of both campaigns were identical.
Our non-segmented email list received the first campaign, while our segmented list received the second (segmented by interest).
The initial non-segmented email received a 42% open rate and a 4.5 percent click-through rate.
The segmented email campaign, on the other hand, received a 94 percent open rate and a 38 percent click-through rate!
Wouldn’t you agree it’s quite valuable?
And isn’t that why so many marketers segregate their emails?
Wrong.
As many as nine out of ten email marketers do not segregate their database.
So, to get you started with segmentation, here are a few examples:
- Industry segmentation: Do you provide services and products to businesses or consumers? Knowing your subscribers’ industries is a wonderful method to categorise your email marketing. A company that sells auto parts, for example, will interact at a significantly higher rate if they receive email marketing about vehicle products than a company that sells software.
- Segment by company size: Account-based marketing, often known as segmenting email messages by company size or annual revenue, is a terrific strategy to boost response rates. A small business with 5 employees is unlikely to be ready for the largest industry conference of the year, but a business with 750 employees may be a better fit.
- Early stage buyers will not be ready for a strong sales pitch or one-on-one demo, but they will appreciate receiving an industry study white paper. Buyers who are ready to buy, on the other hand, will respond positively to product webinars or free trial offers.
3. Send emails that are mobile-friendly.
In 2012, mobile devices were used to open 27% of all marketing emails.
By 2014, that figure had risen to 42 percent.
It is now as high as 61 percent!
These are enormous figures!
And what do you do first thing in the morning?
If you’re anything like me, you probably keep your phone next to your bed and check it first thing in the morning for calls, messages, and, yes, emails…
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. This is something that 50% of us do.
What do you believe happens when you send an email to a subscriber who reads their emails on their mobile device, but the email isn’t optimised for that device?
Most of the time, they will unsubscribe or remove it.
So, why are nearly half of all emails still not mobile friendly?
Worse, according to our own email marketing study, 20% of email messages are not optimised for mobile.
On the other hand, when email campaigns are optimised for mobile, they earn a lot of revenue!
According to Yesmail, the average income per mobile email is $0.40, which is more than four times that of a desktop email click.
Mobile email revenue is four times that of desktop email revenue, and 55 percent of smartphone users have made at least one purchase after receiving a mobile promotional email.
Furthermore, according to a Flexmail survey, 36% of B2B organisations that optimised their email campaigns for mobile devices reported an overall gain in email performance.
So, how should you optimise your mobile campaigns?
Don’t worry, we’ve got some pointers on how to accomplish it.
- Implement responsive email design (RED): Using a responsive email design optimises the user experience regardless of the device or screen they are using. Most email service providers (ESP) have this option as part of their email capability.
- Keep the subject line and pre-header as brief as possible: The topic line is quite important. Keep it brief so that the reader understands the email’s topic. And don’t waste the pre-header text (also known as snippet text) by typing “To view this email in your browser…”. Instead, sum up the email or include a call to action (for example, “FREESHIP” to get free shipping).
- Make the CTA prominent and visible: The size of mobile devices varies. While a text link may function on a tablet or larger screen, your readers with smaller screens (or larger hands!) may be turned off if your call to action is too small. Make the call to action large, bold, and easy to click.
4. Copy, design, and button testing
Testing gives us with facts to make practical decisions that will increase our marketing success, whether you test your home page, landing pages, or email templates.
And email marketing is no exception.
The vast majority of marketers have A/B tested their email marketing.
If I had to guess, I’d assume you’ve tried out your email subject line.
email marketing A/B testing
Even the former US President has A/B tested his email subject lines….
Do you think I’m joking?
Email marketing was critical to Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign’s success.
They were able to quantify the quantity of donations they should expect to get based on the findings by mailing multiple versions to a small sample of members.
The sample size demonstrated that the worst performing subject line (“The one thing the polls got right..”) would produce $403,603 in donations if delivered to the complete database.
The most successful subject line (“I will be outspent”) was predicted to raise $2,540,866 in donations.
That is a significant difference!
Indeed, the best-performing subject line surpassed expectations, generating a total of $2,673,278.
That’s an extra $2.2 million in donations raised as a result of a modification in the email subject line!
By split testing his email subject line, President Barack Obama raised an additional $2 million in donations.
You may test more than just subject lines with email marketing.
You could also try:
- The name that appears in the “from” section has a significant impact on whether or not the reader opens your email. In fact, people open your email because of the sender name. Send your campaigns from a person’s name, a person + company, or your CEO’s name to test your from address.
- Campaigns in plain text vs. HTML: I’m sure you’re already sending a plain text version of your email, like other marketers. However, have you considered testing a plain-text email campaign? When you add a customization feature, plain text emails appear to be crafted specifically for the reader.
- Long vs. short emails: You can keep your emails short and sweet or long and thorough. Longer emails can include more descriptive material, whilst shorter emails will drive the reader to a specific landing page. What is the greatest way to find out what works best? Try it out.
(Do you have no idea how to build your email campaigns? We’ve gathered 21 of the top B2B email marketing examples from the world’s most successful SaaS companies.)
5. When feasible, automate email campaigns.
Trigger-based emails are emails that are automatically sent out based on user action.
Welcome emails, thank you emails, and transactional emails, such as order confirmation emails and email receipts, are the most typical types of trigger emails.
The data behind trigger emails demonstrates that they perform significantly better than standard email.
Epsilon, for example, discovered:
- Trigger email open rates can reach up to 49%. (95 percent higher than traditional email open rates)
- When compared to typical email click-through rates, the average click-through rate (CTR) for trigger emails is more than twice.
Trigger emails are used by the world’s greatest converting websites, which convert up to 40% of their traffic. - Not only that, but According to the Blueshift Report, trigger-based marketing emails outperform batch and blast emails by 497 percent.
Isn’t this too wonderful to be true?
No, it isn’t. We tried it out. It also works!
The following table compares our standard email campaign (left) to our triggered email campaign (right):
Our triggered emails increased open rates by 5x and click-through rates by 15x.
Today, only 20% of marketers utilise triggered emails, and they account for a small percentage of overall email volume, at roughly 2.6 percent. However, they can account for as much as 20% of your email marketing revenue!
Triggered emails work exceptionally well because they fall inside the sweet spot of email marketing.
So, what exactly is the email marketing sweet spot?
It appears as follows:
The sweet spot for email marketing
And it is because of context that they perform so well.
Consider the following example:
You visit a website, examine the product range, and add items to your shopping basket, but you have second thoughts and decide to leave before making a purchase.
Does this sound familiar?
Every single eCommerce store experiences this every day.
But what if you get an email an hour later with the exact product you were looking for?
What if this email contained not simply a quick link back to your shopping basket, but also a free delivery code or a 10% discount?
Are you more inclined to complete your transaction now?
That is the strength of trigger emails.
But isn’t it expensive and difficult to set up triggered emails?
It doesn’t have to be that way. To begin, you can imitate the automation component by using auto-responders in your customer support software. That is what we do for all of our existing triggered emails, and we are pleased with the results.
Here are some examples of trigger emails that you could send:
- Activation occurs when a new user establishes an account but does not utilise your product inside the first seven days. Create a “activation” campaign that sends an automated email with their login details, instructions on how to get started, and a video demonstration for further help. You can also invite them to a one-on-one meeting to go over the product with them and answer any questions they may have.
- Win-back: An existing customer’s yearly subscription is about to expire. The customer hasn’t used your product in three months, and you need to entice them to return and keep them for another year. Create a “win back” email that sends an automated communication to all customers nearing the end of their contract with a list of new product features and a brief timeline of expected releases over the following six months.
- Surprise: The secret to success is customer loyalty. You may also reward your regular consumers by giving them something for free on occasion. Create a “surprise” email that automatically sends an email to your best customers offering them a free yearly licence to your software, a gift card, or even a coupon code to redeem a box of cupcakes. It’s a tiny investment for your company, but the payoff is enormous!
Conclusion
Email marketing is still producing results.
However, email marketing has developed. It is no longer sufficient to send the same email to everyone.
It is past time to revise your email marketing strategy.
You must now send targeted communications. Personalized messages that are tailored for multiple devices.
You must also test new elements. Trends shift swiftly, and what worked 12 months ago may not work today. Allow for testing. When you’ve figured out what works, look for ways to automate it with triggered emails.
Customers will be more responsive if you include these new modifications into your email marketing plan, campaign effectiveness will increase, and your business will continue to expand.
What factors do you believe contribute to the effectiveness of a modern email marketing strategy?
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