Emails are one of the most effective ways of marketing and make people aware of any new launched product or brand. Though, social media marketing is trending these days yet email marketing still remains one of the most effective mediums of digital marketing to make brand awareness.

Email marketing strategies have changed over the time when first commercial email was send some 30 years ago. Email has evolved in the 2010s, and millions of businesses are trying to reach their audience on this platform as an ever evolving medium to keep pace with the changing needs of the consumers.

Email strategies followed couple of years ago are no longer effective in this fast changing time due to number of competitors in the market. Every email should be targeted for higher open rates, click-through rates, and lead conversions. Keeping all these points in mind, some effective tips, tricks, and ideas I would like to share with you as the best techniques and practices to keep your business ahead of your competitors.

1. Email list of your audience should be organic, targeted and personalized

This is one of the basic email marketing practices, every site you own is specifically designed to target specific audience. The same applies to your business as well which is targeted for the specific audience type. Your targeted audience should be the center of the success. If you own two or more sites then also you should not club those email lists together for the common email campaigns. Let the email lists separate for the specific audience type.

Beware to use the third party data from any source for your email campaign as it would only damage your brand reputation since they might not be your targeted audience and sending irrelevant emails to uninterested recipients won’t bring you business. So its always better to generate your own.

Inserting the reader’s name, using triggered automation for welcome emails after subscription, thank you emails after a purchase or conversion, birthday messages and other milestones add a personal touch to your communications.

2. Use Double Opt-In to add extra layer of security

Double Opt-In gives your email list an extra layer of security. Single opt-in allows a site visitor to subscribe by entering their email address without any other information whereas Double opt-in requires users to confirm their email via a personal email link, after which their subscription is activated.

Double opt-in ensures subscribers in the list are real and interested people – not bots or hackers which is one of the best email marketing practices one should follow. Quality over quantity is always better.

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3. Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning for campaign

Segmentation refers to divide your audience into groups based on behavior, location, stage in the marketing funnel, or some other metric or demographic and running several email marketing campaigns which should be customer centric and specially tailored to that audience. This three-step emailing process is very effective in digital marketing and one of the best email marketing practices.

4. Clearly edited and compelling matter should be in the email

The message in mail should be clear and should be understandable by the recipient of the email. It should show the message in clear format to its intended audience. A strong subject line, compelling and meaningful message, clear edited and proofread matter are few of the points should be remembered before sending the email campaign. This is one of the best email marketing practices to make emails effective and professional.

5. Place quizzes, surveys, videos, GIFs, infographics to make email interactive

You can include quizzes, surveys, videos, GIFs, infographics etc. to make your email more interactive so that the readers may engage with your content. This is one of the best email marketing practices followed in recent digital marketing industry. This also increases rate of opening emails, reading emails, clicking on internal links, putting emails in folders or archiving it for future references and also replying the emails.

6. Email campaigns should be optimized for various devices

Emails should be optimized to open in different devices such as android/iOS/Windows smartphones/tablets, Windows/Mac machines etc. Emails must be optimized for mobile viewing with a responsive design. Single column layout, bold interface, and well-sized call to action buttons that are easy to click are preferred mostly. This is one of the most professional way of email marketing practices.

7. Frequency and timings of email campaigns should be maintained

If you are sending emails to your targeted audience daily, weekly or fortnightly then it should be maintained in a regular way. Daily email frequency should not be more than two at a regular interval such as in the morning and evening or should maintain 12 hours interval.

8. Stop email abuse

Email abuse such as spam (unsolicited bulk email & unsolicited commercial email), fraudsters email, malware (adware, zero days, viruses, trojans, etc.) and phishers (spear-phishing) should be prohibited and you should also make sure that your organization’s emails are actually coming from you.

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9. Include artificial intelligence into your email campaign

Advanced analytics, machine learning and AI algorithms should be incorporated into your email marketing campaigns provided by most of the email servers and email campaign facilitators. AI can help analyzing your data such as email delivery, open/spam/block rate by collecting different data. This also helps in achieving your marketing goals as well as increasing your return on investment (ROI). AI can study metrics and activity patterns and can suggest you the best campaign sending time so that the rate to open your emails may increase by analyzing email recipient’s behavior.

10. Experimenting with the different email trends

There is no magic formula for the success of email campaigns rather you should try to adopt the best practices stated above and apart from this always compare your stand with the competitors in your domain. Regular revision and adopting the new advancements of the industry can give a boost in your email marketing campaign and can keep you different from others. A/B tests should always analyzed. Tweak designs, templates, times of sending, subject lines, call to action buttons and every other component of your email marketing should be tested and updated time to time. Always track open rate, clicks and follow-through to better understand your audience and keep track of KPIs. You should follow the fundamentals of SPF and DKIM authorization, DMARC policy, monitoring blacklists, and IP warmup procedures which comes under email delivery infrastructure before sending the mass email campaigns. Trend experiments are always an effective email marketing practices every email campaigns should follow.

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