Email marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to boost your business. It can help you connect with customers, drive revenue, and improve brand awareness. To get the best results out of your email marketing strategy, you need to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices.
We've got you covered.
In this blog post, we'll talk about making the most out of your email marketing campaign and the up-and-coming email marketing trends for 2023.
Design Principle: Keep it Simple
When it comes to email design, the best advice we can offer is to keep it simple.
Send customers a clean, clutter-free email that they'll enjoy looking at. Use clear visuals that capture attention and keep your readers engaged.
Keep paragraphs short and skimmable — if they’re more than 4 sentences, you’re doing it wrong.
If you’re including images in your emails, make sure they’re properly sized and won’t slow down the email’s loading time.
Design your emails with smartphone users in mind. According to HubSpot, 41% of users are checking email on their mobile devices. Design as though all your customers are reading your email on a mobile device. Use short blocks of text, images that look good on smaller screens, and clear call-to-actions that mobile users can easily click through from their phones.
Make sure your emails are Dark Mode compatible – failure to do so could trigger spam filters and impact your deliverability rate.
Open, Sesame! The Email Subject Line
Your subject line has one job - convince your user to open your email.
It should be interesting and engaging - it’s the first thing your customer sees when they receive your email. Use the subject line to spark your customer's curiosity and give them an idea of what's inside.
Sustainable clothing company Outerknown sent an email at the beginning of December with this subject line:
"Important dates to note 🎁".
What’s great about this subject line?
- It's easy to digest – a user could glance at this for 2 seconds and know what the email is about.
- The gift emoji is eye-catching and adds to the user's understanding of the content in the email.
- It creates urgency – the user immediately knows that this email contains time-sensitive information.
Email subject lines are an easy place to learn more about your customer preferences too. We spoke with Lara Banker, MBA (one of our favorite presenters at the Litmus Live email conference this year), who offered this advice:
"A/B test your subject lines with every single email. No coding or design is required, and it takes less than 30 minutes to do so. This will help you learn your audience preferences over time and incrementally increase open rates."
Email Personalization - Show Them You Know Them
Personalized emails are a great way to boost subscriber engagement and connect with your customers.
Your email marketing campaigns should be tailored to the recipients. Use every available opportunity to prove you care about and understand your customers.
Address their needs directly in the body copy. Email personalization is so much more than including your users’ names in the copy, and every email is an opportunity to demonstrate an understanding of your customer's needs.
Set up automated emails based on customer behavior. Has it been a few months since they ordered a lip balm? They're probably almost out, but they may not realize it yet. Send them an email and let them know. A gentle reminder with some personalized content is a great way to increase your conversion rates and customer loyalty. The example below worked like a charm on us!
User-Generated Content: the Digital Marketing MVP
User-generated content is the next big thing in email marketing campaigns.
Why? It’s authentic content that acts as social proof. Users trust other users. Incorporating UGC in your emails allows you to showcase the customer experience.
TechTarget defines user-generated content (UGC) as “published information that an unpaid contributor provides to a website. The information might be a photo, video, blog, or discussion forum post, poll response, or comment made through a social media website.”
Customer photos and reviews make excellent email content – there is no better content creator than a happy customer.
Collecting user-generated content can be a fun way to integrate your social media channels with your email campaigns. Ask users to tag you on social media for a chance to have their photo featured in your newsletter, and then pick one (or more) to include every month. Have you received an especially complimentary review lately? Of course you have! Pick your favorite few sentences and include them in your next email.
The fact is, there are endless options when it comes to collecting user-generated content. Get creative! This article from ShortStack has some great ideas to help get you started.
A word to the wise: always get permission before including user-generated content in your email campaign.
Interactive Emails - Up Your Customer Engagement
Interactive emails are one of the hottest email marketing trends for 2023.
An interactive email is one where a user can engage with the email content, and there are a lot of options available to email marketers who want to include an interactive component in their emails.
Interactive email content can be something as in-depth as allowing the user to make a purchase from within the email, without going to a landing page.
It could also be something as simple as a survey at the end of the email asking for users’ opinions. Technology media company The Hustle includes a simple survey at the end of every newsletter asking users how they liked it:
Email interactivity can be achieved in a myriad of ways, and Email on Acid has a great collection of examples of interactive components and tutorials on how to make them.
Let's Create an Email Marketing Strategy for You
There are many components to a successful email marketing campaign and we're here to help you with all of them. To learn more about developing the perfect email marketing strategy for your business, get in touch today!
