Is Email Marketing Dead? 12 Tips For 2023
Updated April 22, 2024
8 min read
Due to the popularity of social media platforms, it’s easy to think that email marketing is dead. The good news is it remains to be one of the valuable marketing tools that businesses can use for their marketing needs.
Unlike other forms of digital marketing, email marketing helps you build targeted campaigns without costing too much. In addition, you don’t need to worry about social media updates or algorithms. With email, you can control how you wish to communicate with your target audience. This is why many marketers still rely on email marketing to reach their potential customers.
If you’re unsure about the power of email marketing, read below to learn more information before starting an email marketing campaign.
Why Email Marketing Isn’t Dead
One of the reasons email marketing is still alive is that everyone uses email for almost everything. For example, while you can use your phone number to register for social media accounts, emails can be necessary to get app updates or notifications.
Everyone also uses email for work. In many cases, professionals prefer email for communication, allowing them to stay in touch with others at work.
With how frequently people use email, it’s clear that it can be an effective marketing tool for any business. The key to being successful in email marketing is to use the right strategies and tricks to turn potential customers into loyal and paying buyers.
Email Marketing Tips For 2023
As mentioned, email marketing isn’t dead and still working. However, other email marketing practices include ignoring user experience, using impersonal address lines, and violating rules.
If you want to take advantage of what makes email marketing successful, here are some of the tips you should implement:
1. Have An Excellent Marketing Campaign Brief
Before you dive into email marketing and create your campaigns, you must have a plan. When executing email marketing campaigns, it’s vital to have an excellent marketing campaign brief. It’ll help you determine your brand’s overall goals, values, and tone. Moreover, it lets you lay out your target audience in detail, what context is suitable for your campaign, and what budget to work with.
Creating an email marketing campaign brief serves as a map that you can use to hit your goals. Besides, knowing where you want to go and how to get there can make a difference in achieving your desired results.
2. Measure Your Performance Yearly
Measuring the performance of your email campaigns should be done yearly. If you won’t crunch your numbers, setting realistic goals for the entire year is impossible.
Not only will it give you a clue of how you perform against your competitors, but it may also help you determine particular areas that need more attention. When measuring your performance, there are several factors to check such as unsubscribe rate, open rate, and click-through rate.
3. Optimize Your Email’s Preview Text
In every email inbox, your recipients can see your email’s subject and its content preview, also referred to as preview text. By default, the preview text is pulled from your email message. Depending on your preview text, it may affect your email open rates.
To boost open rates, you should optimize your preview text. Sometimes, the default text may not get your content across effectively and look messy. Ideally, preview text must be straightforward and short. For best results, ensure you provide a short but concise summary of your email’s content.
For example, if you offer discounts, don’t forget to add them in your preview text. It must stand out in crowded inboxes to entice your readers and open your emails.
4. Use Compelling Offers To Build A Strong Email List
Another email marketing tip you should remember is to use compelling offers to create a strong email list.
Although purchasing an email list is possible, it isn’t recommended since sending emails to anyone without consent may do more harm than good. Doing so may damage your brand reputation, resulting in low open rates.
Remember that building a healthy and strong email list is the key to success in email marketing. So, instead of buying an email list, focus on providing compelling offers and innovative campaigns. You can entice your potential customers by sending gift vouchers. Another option is to gamify the process of receiving emails using contests or lucky draws.
5. Invest In Email Marketing Automation Software
As more companies hop on the automation bandwagon, investing in the best email marketing automation software is crucial to outshine your competitors. Although you can stick with the traditional strategies, you may struggle to get results in today’s hyper-relevant and automated campaigns. Therefore, if you want to get a competitive edge, implement email marketing automation software.
Effective software comes with tools and features, including the following:
- In-Depth Reporting Tools For Strategic Analysis: It allows users to pull up content engagement profiles and campaign reports to gain insights for more effective email marketing strategies.
- Automated Publication: This feature enables users to send emails automatically based on demographic, contact behavior, etc.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools: Most email marketing automation software features AI-like tools such as A/B split testing to help improve your strategy.
- Dynamic Content For Relevance: Your email content must be relevant to each contact. To make this process easy, email marketing automation software provides dynamic content without creating different versions of the same email.
These are some of the features you can benefit from using email marketing automation tools. However, you can only get the best value from such tools if you choose the right one. When looking around for email marketing automation software, avoid focusing on the price factor only. If possible, weigh the pros and cons of your options to make a smart choice.
6. Personalize Your Content
Rather than sending generic email blasts, applying personalization to your content can help you get better results with your email marketing efforts. Create relevant content based on your recipients’ shopping activities, interests, customer journeys, and other factors. Get more information about their interests by looking into the blogs they read, videos they watch, and purchased items.
Setting some behavior-based triggers to ensure effective email communication since your customers may feel that the content is specifically made for them. When personalizing your email, use the recipient’s name and recommend products related to their interests.
Moreover, pay attention to your email marketing funnels to send more suitable content for your customers based on their stage in the customer journey. You can do this by using your email marketing automation software that allows you to send certain messages based on your customer activities.
For example, set your software to send welcome emails to each customer who signs up for your newsletter. You may also send an abandoned cart email to anyone who left their virtual carts and didn’t purchase any item.
7. Keep Your Emails Contextual And Simple
Most people receive hundreds of emails daily. With such numbers, your email may quickly get lost in the crowd. If you wish your emails to stand out, you must keep them contextual. Make them relevant to your customers and reward them once they open your emails.
A good example is that customers are more likely to open your emails if you send them content related to their purchased items. So, whether it’s a cold email or a follow-up, ensure it’s relevant and meets your customers’ interests and needs.
For effective contextualization, you should segment your users into various groups based on their behavior and actions. You may use AI-based predictive segmentation to categorize users easily.
8. Aim For Effective Subject Line
The best subject line can deliver excellent email campaign results. Remember that your subject line is the first thing your recipients see. How your customers judge your subject line can make or break the engagement rate of your campaigns. Besides, your emails won’t be successful unless your recipients read them.
When writing a subject line for your emails, there are some things you need to take into account, and these are:
- Offer Value: Give your customers a reason to open your email. Your subject line must allude to the value found within your email. For instance, you can inform your target customers about the available discounts by highlighting how much they can save.
- Be Honest: Subject lines must be enticing. However, they shouldn’t compromise the truth of your email content. For example, if your email is an invitation for your event and you included the free product to get higher open rates, make sure to fulfill it. Once you disappoint your customers, they may have trust issues with your emails, reducing the open rates. So, practice honesty with your subject line.
Writing a compelling subject line doesn’t need to be complicated. If you know how to be honest and always provide value, you can guarantee that your subject line will help bring results over time.
9. Keep The Right Timing In Mind
In terms of email marketing, timing is crucial. Optimizing your email schedule can affect your revenue, open rate, and click-through rate.
While there’s no best day to send marketing emails, having a consistent schedule may help you get your desired results. If you think your schedule isn’t working, try experimenting on other days until you gain a high open rate and click-through rate.
Aside from the day of the week, you must also consider the time. In most cases, the best time to send email marketing campaigns is after work. However, it may help to do your own testing to know which time will give you the best results.
Once you find the sweet spot, it’ll be much easier for you to schedule your emails without worrying about the results. Not only will it save you time, but it may also allow you to enjoy financial savings.
10. Segment And Audit Your Email List
Every customer is different, so avoid sending your email list with the same content. To make email marketing work for your business, you must learn about segmenting your list. Although it takes experimentation and time to find the best segments, it’s worth your efforts.
As an email marketer, you must also do your best to protect your customer data. For this reason, it’s critical to audit your database and clean it up. Be sure you have permission to use all email addresses on your lists.
If somebody has unsubscribed, remove them from your active lists. If you have several inactive email subscribers, try reaching out by sending emails with compelling offers. If you didn’t receive any response, remove them from your list. This way, you’ll maintain a list of interested prospects and avoid wasting time on uninterested people.
11. Take Advantage Of Autoresponders
Most email marketers use autoresponders to automate transactional emails. A transactional email has a higher open rate than newsletters. Compared to newsletters, a transactional email isn’t sent from your company to a particular recipient.
Some examples are abandoned cart emails, order notifications, personalized product notifications, and password reminders. While sending emails manually isn’t a practical option for many businesses, setting up an autoresponder will let you send personalized emails with behavioral triggers. Using the right autoresponder can also help you establish trust with customers and take your personalization efforts to the next level.
12. Consider Omnichannel Marketing
At present, omnichannel marketing is a growing trend for businesses of all sizes. By definition, it’s the process of using marketing channels to their full potential, creating a seamless experience for customers using various channels.
If you want your email marketing efforts to work, using omnichannel marketing is essential. The good thing about emails is they’re easy to test, flexible, provide insights into customer behaviors and preferences, and are easy to tailor. With other marketing channels such as search marketing, social media, or paid search, email may help build customer loyalty and drive engagement.
Bottom Line
Email marketing will continue to be a valuable marketing tool for many years to come. Aside from being cost-effective, it may help you reach your target audience effectively. Just make sure to use the right strategies and try to implement the above tips. When done correctly, you’ll enjoy the benefits of email marketing, allowing your business to grow and beat your competitors.