Personal messages, spam, and business updates are just a few of the types of emails that fill a user’s inbox. Last year, there were over 300 billion emails sent and received each day. Emails are a cost effective means of communicating with your customers, earning you a high ROI on email campaigns, but there is always room for improvement. 

It’s high time to update and refine your emails and email marketing strategy. The following are a few ways to update, modernize, and automate your email marketing so your emails are more effective and efficient.

Email marketing best practices  

There is undoubtedly an art to crafting an engaging and effective marketing email, as well as when and how often to send them. Follow these tips to 

1. Prioritize security

A multi-layered defense is essential to help protect sensitive data. Cyberattacks are evolving and phishing schemes are on the rise. Along with steps like maintaining GDPR and PCI compliance, you need to include your email system in your security approach to help protect financial data from businesses and customers. Your rapport with your clients can plummet from a security breach. 

2. Ensure email adaptability

Mobile and desktop email provide two different experiences, which is why checking your email on your phone used to be a clunky experience. If someone opens an email on their phone to find it unreadable, what are the chances they will come back to that email later? A responsive email is one that adapts to any device it is viewed on to ensure user readability. 

3. Refresh old emails

A constant barrage of notifications can quickly over-stimulate your audience. Once they’ve seen a message, it is easier to recognize. When this happens, users may completely ignore the message or unsubscribe to prevent themselves from seeing the same thing over and over. It’s best to refresh your content to prevent this and keep people engaged. 

4. Fix broken links

For your business, it can be easy to miss broken links, but for your customers it is frustrating. Your clients may lose trust in your business or discontinue their email subscription. This is why quality link-building strategies are imperative to keep your customers engaged and increase traffic to your online business. 

5. Match your brand 

You want your audience to recognize what business your email is from and feel connected to it. Brand consistency across your website, social media, and emails will help to build your credibility. 

6. Draft new messages

Refreshing your old emails can help keep your audience engaged, but creating new emails will keep your content interesting. Investing in a freelance writer can help you consistently provide new and stimulating information about your company while you and your team can focus on other tasks. You can expect to pay at least $25 an hour for a quality freelance writer, and this will save you money rather than hiring full-time staff. 

7. Analyze your metrics often

Being aware of your email metrics can help you understand the efficacy of your current email marketing campaign. You can track how often people unsubscribe, how often your emails are read, and how many of them lead to purchases. Understanding these changes can help you and your marketing team understand when and why emails are read and responded to, thus creating more effective campaigns.

8. Involve your audience

An eye-catching email can capture the reader’s attention, but that does not mean the reader’s attention will be kept. Think about ways you can involve your audience. Some ideas include adding links to your newest products, suggesting a hashtag to use, or asking them to provide their review of a product. This will help drive people to your site while providing a way for your readers to engage with your business. 

9. Add videos 

Increasing the amount of people who follow links – the click-through-rate – in your email can increase user participation and lead to more sales. Videos are a good way to catch users’ attention and get them to your site. Videos are known to generate a 173% higher click-through-rate than emails without them. 

10. Include short-term items

Include time-sensitive information in your emails like limited-time discounts, short-term access to content, or offers for limited-time items. Your customers will learn that the only way for them to gain access to these things is by staying up to date with their emails from your company. 

11. Keep it simple and accessible

Emails that are too long, take too long to load, or are over-stimulating will be ignored or deleted. You should also craft your emails to be accessible so they will reach a larger audience and not preclude people who are differently abled from interacting with your content.

12. Stay out of the spam folder

Email providers now have built-in spam filters, and many businesses use advanced filtering softwares as well. There are a variety of strategies to use to help your emails avoid the spam folder. For example, click-bait titles and unsolicited emails are big red flags. 

13. Create a marketing plan

A plan will save you time and money because it will help you stay consistent and measure your success. This keeps your emails in clients’ inboxes, which encourages engagement and purchases. With a plan in place, you can draft effective email copy with less effort that matches your brand identity. 

14. Add sponsored content

As part of your marketing plan, you can use an email newsletter to market sponsored content to your email subscribers. Sponsored content provides you with passive revenue while reducing the amount of content you need to produce. 

15. Allow preferences

The contacts on your email list will vary in their interests and how often they want to receive emails. Allowing preferencing builds your rapport with your clients because emails sent to them are more personalized. It also prevents you from overwhelming your audience. 

16. Require users to opt in

Instead of auto-subscribing users, require them to opt in to email mailing lists. It may reduce the total number of people your emails reach, but it refines your audience to one that is already interested in your business. This improves the success of the marketing campaign because then your users will not view your communications as a nuisance. 

Automation best practices

As your email list grows, the time it takes to send emails individually also increases. Automation can refine this task to free up time for you and your team.

1.   Use a service

Instead of setting up scheduled emails by hand, out-source your email sending to an efficient software. Programs improve employee efficiency, but not all services are created equal. 

Make a list of how you want an automation service to help you. This could include a user-friendly interface, email campaign analytics, email testing, and proven methods to reduce the chance of your email campaigns from ending up in the spam folder.

2.   Optimize your timing

It is unlikely that 2am on a Saturday morning is the best time to send out an email. Fortunately, you can use data from bulk email campaigns to determine the prime time to schedule emails to be sent. 

3.   Use pre-set dates

Automation can work wonders by keeping track of important dates for you. You can send out pre-set emails on their respective dates instead of delegating that task to your team. This is great for anything from holiday promotions to payment reminders for long-term subscribers. 

4.   Always follow up

If you recently hosted an event, emails can be automated to follow-up with attendees, such as with a thank you, survey, or free gift. Also, be sure to send professional confirmations after transactions and purchases are completed, and follow up to make sure the customer was satisfied. 

Conclusion

It is imperative that your email marketing strategies evolve with your company. Updating your email marketing plans and harnessing automation increases visibility and interaction with your business. There is really no reason not to start taking these steps today to give your email marketing a boost.