Email Marketing Tips & Examples for 2023
In 2023, data privacy will become even more important to marketers as people look to protect their personal information and only share it with companies they trust.
In addition, the demise of third-party cookies will make it harder for marketers to target customers through ads and so they need a channel that enables first-party data (and consensual) collection. Welcome to the wonderful world of email marketing.
While many of you may already be using emails in your marketing activities, are you using them effectively to deliver personalized content to your audience?
According to Pathwire research, 84 percent of consumers say they check their emails at least once a day. That provides great opportunities to get your company or brand in front of a lot of people.
So, what are the best tips for email marketing success for data capture and engagement? Let’s look at 9 of the best to help improve and optimize your email marketing activities.
1) Use Personalization
The fact is, personalization works. Merkle’s Customer Engagement Report 2022 found that nearly 80% of business leaders say consumers spend more (an average of 34 percent more) when their experience is personalized.
Despite the success of personalization, customers feel that companies are not living up to their expectations when it comes to being more personal according to Salesforce’s ‘State of the Connected Customer’.
Don’t be one of those companies! Use personalization in your email to drive not only the open rate but engagement. This can be as simple as including the recipient’s first name in the subject line or contacting people on occasions such as their birthday.
Also be sure to make your email from a person, not a business. You can do this by including a person’s name in the “from” section. This will ensure a name is clear to a recipient when it arrives in their inbox. You can also include a photograph so a person shows up instead of a logo like in this example from Dubsat.
Automation (see this list of some top tools) is also useful in personalization as it can enable behavior-triggered emails. These are emails sent based on how customers interact with your products or services. Here’s an example from Sephora’s workflow to a customer reaction.
2) Write a catchy subject line
There’s no underestimating the power of a perfect subject line in your email. It’s the first thing a person sees in their inbox so taking the time to write one that’s relevant and attention-grabbing is worthwhile.
There are many ways to catch someone’s attention with a headline:
Get personal – as we mentioned above use a name in the subject line or refer to something that will resonate e.g. a past purchase or ebook download
Use humor – People are more likely to open an email that makes them smile or pique their curiosity. Don’t be afraid to use humor but make sure it’s something your audience will get.
Include emojis – People are used to using emojis so include ones that are relevant or to emphasize your topic
Use powerful language – Stay away from weak or cliched language. Look to include words that excite or invite action.
Hint at the content – Your subject line should reflect the content of the email so don’t just use a headline because it worked last time. Make it relevant.
Make people curious – People hate to miss out so use that to your advantage in your email. Here’s a sneak preview subject below to give you an example.
3) Audit and clean your email lists
You should already know about the demise of third-party cookies on Google in 2024 and the introduction of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). This has made the way you capture and use data even more important to ensure the protection of customer information.
Email is a perfect example of that all-important first-party data source – consensual information – and you should do your best to protect that data. It’s important to look at your database and clean it up. Make sure you have permission to use every email address you have on your lists. If someone has unsubscribed, make sure to take them off any active lists.
If you have a bank of inactive email subscribers, reach out to them to try and re-engage and offer to remove them if it’s no longer relevant. After all, it’s better to have a smaller database of interested prospects than a lot of uninterested people.
4) Use omnichannel marketing
Going into 2023 and beyond, omnichannel marketing is a growing trend for companies of all sizes.
But what is omnichannel marketing? Put simply, it’s using every marketing channel to its full potential and creating a seamless experience as a customer moves from one channel to another.
Email has an important role to play in omnichannel. The advantage it has is that email is flexible, easy to tailor, easy to test, and can provide insight into customer preferences and behaviors.
In combination with other channels such as social media, paid search, or search marketing, email can drive engagement and build customer loyalty.
5) Include relevant links
Once someone has clicked on your email, you want to make it as easy as possible to direct them to where you want them to go.
Don’t just send a prospect or customer into the ether of your website. Make sure you create relevant and customized landing pages that are a follow-on from the email content.
Also, include social media handles so people can find your brand easily online. Only include the platforms you are active on to make sure the content is up-to-date and you are responsive.
Tip: Check out ‘The Anatomy of an Effective Marketing Email’ for more information.
6) Consider interactivity
You can include interactivity in your email by inviting people to swipe, click, tap or watch. This could be a countdown clock, video or a GIF. The main thing is that it makes someone dwell on your email.
This email from Google Local Guides features a GIF that shows a recipient how to take a picture effectively. This is followed by tips on how to take an effective picture to include on Google. It’s not only eye-catching but highly relevant to its audience.
7) Have a good UI and UX
It’s vital to create a seamless experience for a prospect or customer across all your channels. That means you need to take user experience (UX) and your user interface (UI) into account when you include links in your emails.
In other words, if you are offering a 20 percent discount on a product, the next touchpoint should be a page that gives an overview or description of that product with a simple CTA to enable purchase.
The design and colors should also be similar so there is no confusion when a person clicks through. Consistency is crucial. You could also optimize for mobile to ensure that any touchpoint is mobile-friendly and accessible.
8) Use Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be very useful in your email marketing. There are tools like writing assistant Rytr and delivery platform Sendgrid that automate some processes to help increase engagement and revenue.
AI can help you use advanced computer science techniques and computational firepower to get insights from big data and customer data (which includes customer behavior). Tools can help to write email copy, clean up lists, optimize send times and send automated newsletters.
Check out the best AI and marketing automation tools to use.
9) Look at examples of emails from your industry & competitors
The best way to create a great email campaign is to look at successful ones that get replies within your industry or competitors.
A tool like Mailcharts allows you to look at campaigns to gain insights from real-time and historical data. Let’s look at a few industries to give you examples.
Source: Digital Marketing Institute