Council Post: 10 Tried-And-True Email Marketing Tactics That Actually Work

Despite the numerous digital communications channels available today, email is still one of the best ways to get and stay in touch with your customers. Email marketing is notorious for its high return on investment, and with nearly 4 billion active email users, there’s a huge potential audience waiting to receive your messages.

However, email is only effective if you follow a well-planned strategy—one that doesn’t involve bombarding your subscribers or sending sales pitch after sales pitch. If you want to improve your email marketing efforts, follow these 10 tried-and-true methods recommended by the members of Young Entrepreneur Council.

1. Write A Good Subject Line

Writing good email subject lines is helpful to any email marketing campaign. You can have the best content in the email, but it’s doing you no good if you send it with a poor subject line. Use power words to elicit a reaction from subscribers and consider adding emojis to lighten the mood a bit. Most email clients render them now, so they can add a little extra flavor to your subject lines. – Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster

2. Share Your Thought Leadership Pieces In Email

Too often companies’ email marketing campaigns are simply sales pitches. Instead of selling in the email, share your knowledge with your target audience and showcase your credibility by linking to an article you authored for a publication in your industry. – Kelsey Raymond, Influence & Co.

3. Split Test Your Campaigns

Split testing your email marketing campaign is one of the best ways to grow your list. Essentially, split tests allow you to experiment with different marketing strategies until you find something that resonates with your audience. I like using split tests because they give me the option to try something totally new without committing to the change until after we see the results. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

4. Optimize Your Send Time

Find the right time of day to send out your email newsletter. It will rarely be on the weekend, but other than that you’ll probably need to do a little research. Timing is one of the most important parts of any email marketing campaign because it increases the chance that your message will get opened, which is half the battle. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

5. Send Targeted, Segmented Email Sequences

We stay in contact with our customers by sending targeted and segmented email sequences to help build deeper connections and trust. Right now, we have a dozen entry points and a dozen different email sequences that educate or entertain our audiences on a specific topic they opted-in for. Very seldom do we put them in our general email list in order to prevent spamming them. – Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC

6. Customize Your Emails Based On Actual Customer Behavior

When do your readers tend to open their emails the most? Where are they in the buyer’s journey? Don’t just send emails at a certain time because a blog told you to. Marketing is about grasping the fundamentals and going off to find what works for your business. It’s funny how everyone understands that all relationships aren’t the same but fail to apply the same idea to customer relationships. – Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS

7. Make It Personal

Make it personal by calling out their nickname in the subject line, mentioning their favorite products and even greeting them or giving them discounts on their birthday. It works when it is “personalized.” Talk to them using their “slang,” which means making emails for different generations. It requires more effort but is definitely worth it because it looks like a personal email. – Daisy Jing, Banish

8. Define A Clear Action You Want The Reader To Take

In addition to a creative layout and an interesting subject line, you should have a goal for each and every one of your emails. Always ask yourself, what is the one key action you want your reader to make when they reach the bottom of the page? Did they learn something new about your brand, your product/service or your team? They should always feel that they walked away with something valuable. – Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

9. Know Why You’re Sending It

Before you hit “send” on any email, ask yourself why you’re sending it (what is the benefit to the recipient?) and what action you want the reader to take as a result. If you don’t have a clear and compelling answer, either reconfigure the email or don’t send it. This will build trust with your list and raise your open rates because they know every email is relevant and beneficial to them. – Brittany Hodak, Keynote Speaker

10. Send Fewer Emails

You need to stop sending emails to your entire list every time you mail and, instead, send targeted emails to engaged people. This will keep your deliverability healthy because only people who want to get your emails will see them. Then send customized emails to different segments of your lists. – Warren Jolly, adQuadrant